  Since 2007, several contributions have tried to identify early-warning
signals of the financial crisis. However, the vast majority of analyses has
focused on financial systems and little theoretical work has been done on the
economic counterpart. In the present paper we fill this gap and employ the
theoretical tools of network theory to shed light on the response of world
trade to the financial crisis of 2007 and the economic recession of 2008-2009.
We have explored the evolution of the bipartite World Trade Web (WTW) across
the years 1995-2010, monitoring the behavior of the system both before and
after 2007. Our analysis shows early structural changes in the WTW topology:
since 2003, the WTW becomes increasingly compatible with the picture of a
network where correlations between countries and products are progressively
lost. Moreover, the WTW structural modification can be considered as concluded
in 2010, after a seemingly stationary phase of three years. We have also
refined our analysis by considering specific subsets of countries and products:
the most statistically significant early-warning signals are provided by the
most volatile macrosectors, especially when measured on developing countries,
suggesting the emerging economies as being the most sensitive ones to the
global economic cycles.
