International trade — a structural analysis

Abstract

This paper takes a fresh look at the structure of International Trade. In particular it applies Galtung's structural theory of imperialism to trade relations, and presents hard evidence to both support and modify his claims.

By taking an historical perspective, emerging trends and the resulting structures are isolated.

From a methodological point of view, the paper is a further attempt to apply on a large scale the rigour and power of methematics to the study of International Trade and Relations and to popularize techniques well suited to the analysis of the structure of a set of Relations of any kind.