Analysis of Global Remittance Based on Complex Networks

• Main Authors: Shigang Wen, Yu Tan, Mengge Li, Yunke Deng, Chuangxia Huang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-04-01
• Series: Frontiers in Physics
• Subjects: remittance flow; complex network; degree distribution; key economies; community structure
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphy.2020.00085/full

Remittance, one money flow between immigrants and their relatives, is a major source of foreign exchange revenue for economies. Consisting of economies linked by the money flows, global remittance constitutes a network. In this paper, we use bilateral remittances of 210 economies for the time period 2010–2016 to construct a global remittance network (GRN) and then investigate the network's structural properties. We study the degree distribution of the network and find that it is of heterogeneity. Analyses of centrality measures reveal that some key economies, such as the United States, France, India and China, are always ranked the highest. We also detect 6 communities in the network, where economies in the same regional economy cooperative organizations tend to be classified in the same community. Intra-community flows account for 66.07% of total remittances, indicating that economies present the characteristic of regionalization. In addition, the results of the topological stability test show that GRN is fragile to node removal, particular the selective removal based on betweenness centrality.