Significance of the Nested Structure in Multiplex World Trade Networks

Figure 1

Three representations of matrices, respectively, correspond to none, moderate, and perfect nested network. (a) These three networks have the same number of nodes and links. (b) In each matrix, the rows and columns have been ranked by the number of ones (i.e., degree). In a perfectly nested matrix, the upper-left triangle would be full of elements and the lower-right triangle would have no elements.