Network Sources of National Competitive Advantage: Institutions and the Contingent Value of Brokerage Positions

The authors motivate social capital arguments at the world-system level through the analysis of world-trade flows and nation status, 1956 to 1980, with specific attention to contextual changes in global trade and stratified effects on participation in trade within it. They generate measures of structural autonomy based on world-trade data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Index and incorporate these measures into robutst regression models of the determinants of nation status.