Speaker: Matthieu Cristelli (Université de Rome)

Title: The development pathways of nations: the heterogeneous dynamics of economic complexity

Abstract:

Recent results of a new branch – Economic Complexity – set basis for a framework to interpret and explain the extreme heterogeneity of the dynamics of development of nations. The idea behind the concept of Economic Complexity is to use the output of a country to determine how fertile the economic system is. In other words, to go from the observable exported products to a synthetic estimate (fitness) of the level of endowments present in the country, that automatically takes their relationships into account. We will discuss the main results and achievements of Economic Complexity and we will discuss how the World Trade Web can provide information to develop a fundamental analysis for macro economic outlook of countries. As an example of them, the metrics for country intangibles allows for quantifying the hidden growth potential of countries by comparing it with money-based figures such as the GDP per capita. Last but not least, we will present how it is possible to build a network linking products named Product Progression which is able to explain the increasing complexity and technological level of products and how we can leverage machine learning techniques to forecast future baskets of products in the mid term.