Research on spatial economic structure for different economic sectors from a perspective of a complex network

• We first study the spatial economic structure from the network perspective.
• Connectivity distribution of a spatial economic network does not follow the power law.
• There is a significant discrepancy of network structure between different economic sectors.
• The extent of the influence of the geographic distance plays an important role on the structure of a spatial economic network.
• 2000 km is the critical value of geographic distance for its influence on the economic connection in China.

The economy system is a complex system, and the complex network is a powerful tool to study its complexity. Here we calculate the economic distance matrices based on annual GDP of nine economic sectors from 1995–2010 in 31 Chinese provinces and autonomous regions,1 then build several spatial economic networks through the threshold method and the Minimal Spanning Tree method. After the analysis on the structure of the networks and the influence of geographic distance, some conclusions are drawn. First, connectivity distribution of a spatial economic network does not follow the power law. Second, according to the network structure, nine economic sectors could be divided into two groups, and there is significant discrepancy of network structure between these two groups. Moreover, the influence of the geographic distance plays an important role on the structure of a spatial economic network, network parameters are changed with the influence of the geographic distance. At last, 2000 km is the critical value for geographic distance: for real estate and finance, the spearman’s rho with l<2000l<2000 is bigger than that with l>2000l>2000, and the case is opposite for other economic sectors.