Metabolism of Inter-Firm Transactions in Regional Networks

Many industrial transaction networks were destroyed or restructured after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Some companies went bankrupt, but most survived the disaster. It was crucial for companies, especially those with business relations in affected areas, to know the sustainability of their transaction networks. In this study, we attempted to grasp the duration of companies in terms of their transaction metabolism. We obtained data from Teikoku Databank, Ltd. and analyzed 391,430 transactions between companies in the affected Tohoku district in the period from 2010 to 2014. We took the inter-firm transactions as links, and calculated their duration in each company during the designated period. We examined whether companies with a high rate of long-lasting links were well-equipped for the disaster, and found that link continuity did not always represent the duration of a company. We focused on the metabolism of the links in each company, which was defined by the diversity of their lasting rate. Examining the restructuring after the disaster, we concluded that the metabolism of the links indicated the characteristics of a company in industry transaction networks.