The Empirics of Macroeconomic Networks: A Critical Review

This chapter critically surveys the recent empirical literature applying complex-network techniques to the study of macroeconomic dynamics. We focus on three important macroeconomic networks: international trade, finance and migration/mobility. We discuss both the empirical evidence on the topological properties of these networks and econometric works that identify the impact of network properties on macroeconomic dynamics. Results indicate that a detailed knowledge of macroeconomic networks is necessary to better understand the dynamics of country income, growth and productivity, as well as the diffusion of crises.