ECONOMIC COMPLEXITY: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Keywords: Complexity, Bibliometrics, Growth

Abstract

This is a systematic review of the literature on economic complexity. We organize the most current and relevant research studies on the construction of the Economic Complexity Index and its empirical analysis. We searched “Economic Complexity” and its relative direct equivalent term “Economic Complexity Index”, “Economic Growth”, “Economic Development”. The initial selection of the studies found 29 articles in a universe of 472. A total of 44 papers were obtained from Science Direct, 185 from Web of Science and 243 from Scopus. An important fact found in the review is that, since the more traditional empirical literature on the subject is still nascent, its application to regional realities is still nascent. This can be identified by the fact that in a significant universe of studies, only 5 presented proposals for methodological adaptation to the regional scope. In the literature, it is usually concluded that the productive structure of a country or region directly influences the level of growth, and high-income level is related to high complexity.

Author Biographies

Ernani de Almeida Silva Junior, ESAN/UFMS

MSc in Administration (Federal University of South Mato Grosso-UFMS, Brazil). Bachelor in Economics.

Mayra Batista Bitencourt Fagundes, ESAN/UFMS

PhD in Applied Economics (Federal University of Viçosa-UFV,Brazil). Bachelor in Economics. Researcher in Microeconomics and Competitiveness.

Adriano Figueiredo, ESAN/UFMS

PhD in Applied Economics (Federal University of Viçosa-UFV,Brazil). Bachelor in Economics and Bachelor in Civil Engineering. Researcher in Regional and Develoment Economics.

References

Balassa, B. (1965). Trade liberalisation and “revealed” comparative advantage. The Manchester School 33, 99–123. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9957.1965.tb00050.x

Chavez, J.C., Mosqueda, M.T., Gomez-Zaldivar, M. (2017). Economic complexity and regional growth performance: Evidence from the mexican economy. The Review of Regional Studies 47, 201.

Gao, J., Zhou, T. (2018). Quantifying China’s regional economic complexity. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 492, 1591–1603. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.physa.2017.11.084

Hausmann, R., Hidalgo, C.A., Bustos, S., Coscia, M., Simoes, A., Yildirim, M.A. (2014). The atlas of economic complexity: Mapping paths to prosperity. Mit Press, Cambridge.

Hidalgo, C.A., Hausmann, R. (2009). The building blocks of economic complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 10570–10575. doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0900943106

Kitchenham, B. (2004). Procedures for performing systematic reviews. Keele, UK, Keele University 33, 1–26.

Krantz, R., Gemmetto, V., Garlaschelli, D., 2018. Maximum-entropy tools for economic fitness and complexity. Entropy 20, 743. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/e20100743

Operti, F.G., Pugliese, E., Andrade, J.S., Jr., Pietronero, L., Gabrielli, A. (2018). Dynamics in the fitness-income plane: Brazilian states vs world countries. Plos One 13, 1–20. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197616

Pedreira, O., Piattini, M., Luaces, M.R., Brisaboa, N.R. (2007). A systematic review of software process tailoring. ACM Sigsoft Software Engineering Notes 32, 1–6.

Reynolds, C., Agrawal, M., Lee, I., Zhan, C., Li, J., Taylor, P., Mares, T., Morison, J., Angelakis, N., Roos, G. (2018). A sub-national economic complexity analysis of australia’s states and territories. Regional Studies 52, 715–726.

Salles, F.C., Rocha, E.M.P. da, Bessa Porto, I.V. de, Vasconcelos, F.L.V. (2018). A armadilha da baixa complexidade em minas gerais: O desafio da sofisticação econômica em um estado exportador de commodities. Revista Brasileira de Inovação 17, 33–62.

Stojkoski, V., Utkovski, Z., Kocarev, L. (2016). The impact of services on economic complexity: Service sophistication as route for economic growth. Plos One 11, 1–29. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161633

Tacchella, A., Cristelli, M., Caldarelli, G., Gabrielli, A., Pietronero, L. (2012). A new metrics for countries’ fitness and products’ complexity. Scientific Reports 2, 723. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00723

Vinci, G.V., Benzi, R. (2018). Economic complexity: Correlations between gross domestic product and fitness. Entropy 20, 766. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/e20100766

Zhu, S., Li, R. (2017). Economic complexity, human capital and economic growth: Empirical research based on cross-country panel data. Applied Economics 49, 3815–3828.

Published
2020-09-24
Section
Artigos