My NCBISign In

Display Settings:

Format

Send to:

Choose Destination
    Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jun 30;106(26):10570-5. Epub 2009 Jun 22.

    The building blocks of economic complexity.

    Hidalgo CA, Hausmann R.

    Source

    Center for International Development and Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. cesar_hidalgo@ksg.harvard.edu

    Abstract

    For Adam Smith, wealth was related to the division of labor. As people and firms specialize in different activities, economic efficiency increases, suggesting that development is associated with an increase in the number of individual activities and with the complexity that emerges from the interactions between them. Here we develop a view of economic growth and development that gives a central role to the complexity of a country's economy by interpreting trade data as a bipartite network in which countries are connected to the products they export, and show that it is possible to quantify the complexity of a country's economy by characterizing the structure of this network. Furthermore, we show that the measures of complexity we derive are correlated with a country's level of income, and that deviations from this relationship are predictive of future growth. This suggests that countries tend to converge to the level of income dictated by the complexity of their productive structures, indicating that development efforts should focus on generating the conditions that would allow complexity to emerge to generate sustained growth and prosperity.

    PMID:
    19549871
    [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
    PMCID:
    PMC2705545
    Free PMC Article

    Images from this publication.See all images (4) Free text

    Fig. 1.
    Fig. 3.
    Fig. 2.
    Fig. 4.

    Publication Types, MeSH Terms

    Publication Types

    MeSH Terms

    LinkOut - more resources

    Full Text Sources

    Other Literature Sources

      Supplemental Content

      Icon for HighWire Press Icon for PubMed Central

      Save items

      loading

      Related citations in PubMed

      See reviews... See all...

      Cited by 2 PubMed Central articles

      Related information

      • Related Citations
        Calculated set of PubMed citations closely related to the selected article(s) retrieved using a word weight algorithm. Related articles are displayed in ranked order from most to least relevant, with the “linked from” citation displayed first.
      • References for this PMC Article
        Citation referenced in PubMed article. Only valid for PubMed citations that are also in PMC.
      • Free in PMC
        Free full text articles in PMC
      • Cited in PMC
        Full-text articles in the PubMed Central Database that cite the current articles.

      Recent activity

      Clear Turn Off Turn On

      Your browsing activity is empty.

      Activity recording is turned off.

      Turn recording back on

      See more...
      You are here: NCBI > Literature > PubMed
      Write to the Help Desk