Covid-19 and Digitalization: Network Analysis On Industrial Robots Trade Among The Bri Countries

Abstract

The pandemic indicates that the use of digital technologies is going to become more important hereafter. In such a world where countries need to take action to shape their future in accordance with this ‘new normal’, the policies followed by countries in high technological sectors will be determinative on their positions within global value chains in the future. Based on this, international trade of industrial robots among the Belt and Road Initiative members is analyzed via complex network tools in the present study. The empirical results indicated that the international trade network of industrial robots has complex system properties such as power-law distribution, disassortativity, core-periphery structure etc. The results also revealed that developing members of the Initiative may exploit export hubs of the network, namely South Korea, Singapore, Austria and Italy in order to digitalize their economies in the short-term.