Dr. Franz Berhn
Imperial University
Imperial University
Table of Contents
1. Methodology
2. Categories
3. Overall Results
4. Year-by-Year Comparison
5. Significant Results
A. Decline of the Military Industrial Complex
B. Emergence of the Peaceful Economy
C. Rise of Support Threads
Knowledge is power. Nations and corporations rise on the back it, or fall because they neglect it. In a global economy, knowing ones competitors, the barriers to entry to an untapped market, or the buying habits of a country can make or break a multinational corporation. Yet despite this, the field of global economic research is virtually non-existent.
The Great Global Economics and Trade Survey aims to change that by providing intellectuals with a solid pool of data and information from which to build future research. The study itself is massive, with a sample size equal to nearly 10% of the corporations in the world. The results are often surprising. Most importantly, the survey is complete, available with both numbers and analysis.
After months of planning to present the findings, I proudly present:
The Great Global Economics and Trade Survey
A Statistical Snapshot of the Subforum
A Statistical Snapshot of the Subforum
METHODOLOGY
The survey was conducted using a simple random sample of 40 pages from the 445 available on the Global Economics and Trade forum at the time of the study. This gave a sample size of n=1000 threads. A random number generator was used to generate 40 three digit numbers between 001 and 445, with no repetition, and the corresponding page numbers were opened over a time interval of approximately five minutes in a single window of Google Chrome.
Each thread was assigned to one of 19 categories, blocked by year the thread was originally posted, and manually entered as a tick mark on a table. For threads where the category was clear from the title of the post, only the title was read before assignment. For those where it was not immediately clear, the thread was opened in a separate tab and the opening post was read in order to accurately assign the thread.
After all 1000 threads were assigned by year and category, the data was transferred from the paper tables into Microsoft Excel. This was used to calculate the percent of the total threads for each category of the total threads and of each year. Microsoft Excel was also used to create graphs of the data.
In the study, there were several possible errors that could result. The first would be misclassification. It is possible that a small number of threads may have been classified into a wrong category, though as all threads with even a small amount of ambiguity were opened before classification, the number is likely insignificant. There is also the likelihood that this study may be skewed by temporary trends that have taken place in a particular industry. For example, if over the period of a few weeks the oil industry experienced a significant rise in interest, threads related to the resources and energy industry created over a wide period of time could be concentrated in just a few pages which, if skipped, could result in the exclusion of a significant portion of the threads. At the same time, if such a page were to be included, it could result in an industry being overrepresented in a particular year. Additionally, the relatively smaller sample size of 2013 threads, given that only two months had been completed at the time of the study, means that data for that year may not be representative. Finally, as with any manual data collection, it is possible to have human error. This resulted in what amounts to a 'non-response', whereby from the data collection to the entry into the spreadsheet, the sample size decreased from 1000 to 979. It is unlikely that this would impact the data in a major way.
CATEGORIES
As stated before, every thread was separated into one of 19 categories.
Conglomerate: Storefronts that serve as either the hub thread for multiple storefronts, or as a storefront selling products in multiple categories.
Consumer Products: Threads that sell products which would commonly be found in large retail stores, or storefronts for retail stores themselves.
Civilian Transportation Manufacture: Threads related to the manufacture, sale, and or acquisition of civilian transportation products, such as automotive, civilian aeronautics, and public transportation storefronts.
Civilian Travel: Threads related to travel for non-military, including but not limited to airlines, airports, and cruise lines.
Economic Alliances and Trade Organizations: Hubs and declarations for alliances between nations and corporations devoted specifically to economic matters.
Entertainment and Media: Television networks, video game corporations, and book publishers are prime examples of this category.
Financial Services: Threads devoted to the financial sector, such as banks, stock exchanges, and credit cards.
Guides: Typically out of character threads that help players with forum issues.
Mercenary: Mercenaries, bodyguards, and private military corporations were grouped into this category.
Military Hardware: Storefronts and acquisitions threads pertaining specifically to the sale or procurement of military hardware.
OOC Discussions: Discussions pertinent to the forum which take place out of character.
OOC Services: Threads which run as storefronts serving potentially out of character purposes, such as map making, language creation, and flag design.
Other: Threads that do not quite fit into any of the other defined categories. These can range from private prisons, to woven basket sales, to magic trees.
Product Pages: Threads containing only a single product, typically forwarding purchases to a central thread.
Resources and Energy: Raw materials and energy threads, ranging from mining corporations to nuclear power.
Restaurant and Food: Agriculture and restaurant storefronts that run on either side of the food supply chain.
RPs: Roleplays found in the Global Economics and Trade forum.
Slave Trade: Threads centered on the trafficking and sale of humans or other sentient species.
Unknown: Threads that can not be classified due to technical issues, most commonly because their contents had been deleted by the original poster.
OVERALL RESULTS
The overall findings of the survey are not particularly surprising for a regular follower of global economic matters. Roughly one third of threads in the sample were military hardware related, making it far and a way the largest single category. It is common wisdom to say that military storefronts and acquisition threads are the dominant threads found on the subforum. This is likely due to the easy ability to tie military hardware from Global Economics and Trade into wars found on the International Incidents forum as compared to, say, a video game console.
The next largest, with only one third as many threads, was the other category. The fact that these hard to classify threads make up such a large contingent of the threads found on the forum is a testament to the creativity of many users, with such interesting storefronts as a massage chair company and a storefront selling baskets woven by its nation's people providing a foil to the more serious threads. It should be noted that some types of threads which were not quite common enough to warrant their own category, such as construction storefronts, were placed into the other category, helping boost its numbers to 10% of the total.
Civilian travel, dominated by the airlines and airports which have long been a staple of the global economic scene, came in a narrow third with 8.8% of the sample. Closely following, in fifth and sixth places respectively, were two other bread-and-butter industries: energy and resources and civilian transportation manufacture. These three industries combined for 20.9% of the sample, showing that non-military industries are certainly a major part of the marketplace.
Also high on the list are product pages, which came in fourth with 6.5% of the sample falling in the category. While this was a very diverse group, it demonstrates that many storefronts occupy more than just a single thread.
One notable bottom-dweller is the consumer products category. With only 1.1% of the sample, the industry was larger than only the guides category, showing that besides entertainment electronics, consumers on the forum are a tough sell.
YEAR-BY-YEAR COMPARISON
It is clear that over the life of the forum, there have been significant changes in the threads created. While categories such as other and economic alliances and trade organizations have remained relatively stable, others have experienced dramatic swings in their percentage of threads per year.
Product pages, for example were relatively insignificant during 2009, when they made up only 1.1% of the sample. Since then, the have dramatically increased in prevalence, with a peak in 2012 of 9.8% of the threads from that year. This may be a result of already sizable storefronts slowly growing larger, increasing the need for external storage of products.
Another category that has experience significant flux throughout the life of the forum is entertainment and media. In 2009, the category encompassed 5.9% of the sample, making it tied for fifth overall. The next year that number dropped to only .7% of the sample, before recovering to between 2% and 4%, which is where it sits currently.
What all of this shows is that the global economic makeup never remains the same. Trends come and go, industries rise and fall, and no single segment of the market is immune to change. An industry can rise from almost nothing to relative prominence, as the mercenary industry did between 2009 and 2010, only to fall again into obscurity. Likewise, a market segment such as restaurants and food can build slowly over the years, from a mere 1.8% of 2009 threads to around 3.5% in 2011 and 2012, before exploding to make up a significant 12.7% of the 2013 sample.
SIGNIFICANT FINDINGS
The Military Industrial Complex is in a Rapid Decline
This decline can be put into a linear regression, giving it an r-value of .995 and a slope of -.0513, for the regression equation y=.4166-.0513x, where y is the percentage of the sample and x is the years since the beginning of the forum. This indicates a very strong, negative, linear relationship between years passed and the military category's prevalence in new studies created, with the industry falling around five percentage points every year.
Several explanations can be made for why this is occurring, though future research will be necessary to provide a better answer. It is possible that the industry has 'matured', meaning that years of growth has produced a situation where large market leaders are able to effectively stifle the creation of new competitors simply due to the daunting challenge of having to compete with, say, a Lyran Arms.
It may also be that players simple want to do things differently. The idea of a weapons storefront may now be seen as 'generic', and creating corporations in other industries may be seen as edgier or more modern.
The Emergence of the Peaceful Economy
When viewing the categories, those defined as war industries include: military hardware, mercenary, and slave trade. In contrast, the peaceful industries are: resource and energy, civilian transportation manufacture, financial services, restaurant and food, civilian travel, consumer products, and entertainment and media. When viewed together, the inverse correlation between the two becomes very clear. In 2009, violent industries made up 42.5% of the forum, while their peaceful counterparts composed only 32%. The next year, war industries managed to rise to 44.0% despite the fall in military hardware thanks to a bump in popularity for mercenary corporations and the slave trade. At the same time, peaceful industries fell to an all-time low of 26.0%.
Since then, the opposite has been true, as peaceful industries have risen tremendously while war industries have fallen ever further. In 2012, peaceful industries passed their counterparts for the first time, with 35.0% of the forum, compared to 32.7% for violent industries. In 2013, that trend has continued, with peaceful industries surpassing even the all-time high for war industries, currently sitting at 44.4%, while violent industries sit at a mere 23.8%.
It is highly possibly that the same factors causing the decline of the military hardware industry are responsible for the grown in more peaceful alternatives. If new storefront owners are turned away from creating weapons of war, they still have to turn somewhere. Once again, future studies should be conducted into this area.
The Rise of 'Support Threads'
Such threads increased from only 8.9% of the 2009 sample to 12.3% the next year, and 17.0% in 2011. The increase is most prominent among product page threads, which rose from a mere 1.2% of the sample to 8.3% in 2011, though the other categories did play a small role.
This increase in the proportion of non-storefront threads is perhaps analogous to the rise of the services segment of post-industrial economies. Before the creation of the Global Economics and Trade forum, storefronts and industries were relatively scattered. When the forum was created, an 'industrial revolution' began, with virtually every newcomer hoping to create their own storefront. Today, as storefronts have become established and much of the economy has 'matured', there is rising an increased demand for guides, logistics, and discussion of how best to run storefronts.
This theory runs into a problem when one considers that such threads have declined since 2011, and are now almost back to 2010 levels of prominence. Future research into this trend, especially into the emergence of the product page and other support threads as major factors into the global economics and trade forum, are necessary.
For the full data set, see here
I originally planned to count every. single. thread... by hand. Then I realized that that would be an absolute nightmare, and that I just don't have the time to hand count 11,000 odd threads. 1,000 was enough.
![[ National Flag ]](https://i.imgur.com/7vADKOP.png){kind=link}
