Random walks on the world input-output network

Modern production is increasingly fragmented across countries.To disentangle theworld production system at sector level, we use the World Input-Output Database to construct the World Input-Output Network (WION) where the nodes are the individual sectors in different countries and the edges are the transactions between them. In order to explore the features and dynamics of the WION, in this article we detect the communities in the WION and evaluate their significance using a random walk Markov chain approach. Our results contribute to the recent stream of literature analysing the role of global value chains in economic integration across countries, by showing global value chains as endogenously emerging communities in the world production system, and discussing how different perspectives produce different results in terms of the pattern of integration. © The authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.