Network Simulation on the Evaluation of Urbanization in Turkey against the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began as an international health crisis, has quickly become an economic crisis on both national and global scale. As economies are linked through global value chains, this crisis has significantly affected the global economy. The strict measures to prevent the rapid spread of the virus negatively affected the supply and demand relations. In this study, the authors examine the inter-provincial supply-demand relations in Turkey via a complex network analysis. The analysis has the following two stages: examination of topological properties and simulation estimates. The topological analysis reveals the complexity and core-periphery structure of the inter-provincial trade network. Istanbul comes to the forefront as the strongest node in the network in terms of both supply and demand. Simulation results reveal that such economic dependence on Istanbul alone makes the inter-provincial trade system more vulnerable against supply or demand shock.