  Economy, and consequently trade, is a fundamental part of human social
organization which, until now, has not been studied within the network
modelling framework. Networks are mathematical tools used in the modelling of a
wide variety of systems in social and natural science. Examples of these
networks range from metabolic and cell networks to technological webs. Here we
present the first empirical characterization of the world trade web, that is,
the network built upon the trade relationships between different countries in
the world. This network displays the typical properties of complex networks,
namely, scale-free degree distribution, the {\it small world} property, a high
clustering coefficient and, in addition, degree-degree correlation between
different vertices. All these properties make the world trade web a complex
network, which is far from being well-described through a classical random
network description.
