A Complex Network-Based Visual Analysis of Business Tendency and Consumer Opinion Surveys

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD) offers several databases for research and transparency purposes. One dataset, centred on data pertaining to business tendency and consumer opinion surveys, belonging to corresponding OECD countries as well as their main economic partners, is particularly heterogeneous. Not all countries have complete data for all the relevant categories; most of the countries outside OECD have very few data fields available. Traditional mathematical methods can process this type of data, but the analysis process tends to be tedious and hypothesis based, thus error prone. On the other hand, complex networks are created to work with large and partially incomplete data sets, their intrinsic mathematical support creating reliable metrics. This paper presents a method of transforming the current databases into complex networks and of analysing them with specific complex networks techniques. The results are then compared to the current economic outline.