Research Article

Significance of the Nested Structure in Multiplex World Trade Networks

Figure 3

Nested structure in world trade networks. (a) The three matrices are representations of the different layers of world trade networks which respectively correspond to the network of bovine, motorcycles, and medical instruments. The shape of these three matrices (i.e., the number of rows and columns) is , , and . The nestedness of matrices () is 0.12, 0.37, and 0.57, respectively. (b) The curve is the distribution of nestedness calculated by all matrices of products.