The effect of the mined cobalt trade dependence Network's structure on trade price

Cobalt plays a vital role in the development of strategic emerging industries. However, because different countries have different resource endowments, their degree of dependence on cobalt varies. Furthermore, the relationship between trade and supply and demand has affected the trade price of cobalt. This article first built cobalt trade dependence networks from 2007 to 2017, combining resource dependence theory and complex network theory to explore the networks' structural characteristics and recognize the structural roles of countries. Next, a panel regression analysis was applied to quantify the contribution of each country's structural role to cobalt trade prices. The results show that the global cobalt trade is concentrated in a limited number of countries, and a few countries play a crucial role in this trade. Cobalt prices, which are closely related to supply and demand, are clearly correlated with the position and role of trading countries in the network. For example, the topological indicators representing the role of country position, such as closeness centrality, betweenness centrality and the clustering coefficient, have significant positive effects on the cobalt trade price. •The dependence of international cobalt trade was calculated based on the point-wise mutual information method.•We construct the model of cobalt trade dependence network.•We identified the structural of network to describe the position and role of trading countries.•Trade dependence on network structure has an effect on trade price.