Page 62 - The Atlas of Economic Complexity

MAPPING PATHS TO PROSPERITY | 63

ranking 1 shows the Economic Complexity ranking. Here by region:
countries are sorted based on the amount of productive knowl- By region, the most complex economies in Eastern Europe
edge that is implied in their export structures (see Part 1, Section and Central Asia are the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hun-
2: How do we measure economic complexity?). The countries in gary, while the worst performing ones are Tajikistan, Turk-
the top ten of this ranking are Japan, Germany, Switzerland, menistan and Azerbaijan. In Latin America and the Carib-
Sweden, Austria, Finland, Singapore, Czech Republic, the UK bean the best performers are Mexico (ranked 20), Panama
and Slovenia. Immediately after the top 10 we have France, (30) and Costa Rica (49); Brazil ranks fourth (52 in the world-
Korea and the US. Of the top 20 countries, half are in Western wide scale) followed by Colombia (54). The worst performers
Europe, 3 are in East Asia, and surprisingly 4 are in Eastern are Ecuador (93), Nicaragua (97), Bolivia (101) and Venezuela
Europe. Israel and Mexico close the list of the top 20. These are (111). In East Asia and the Pacific, the best performers are Ja-
countries with productive structures that are able to hold vast pan (1), Singapore (7) and Korea (12), followed by Hong Kong
amounts of productive knowledge, and that manufacture and (24), China (29) and Thailand (31). The worst performers are
export a large number of sophisticated goods. At the bottom of Lao (102), Mongolia (113) and Papua New Guinea (124).
the economic complexity ranking we have Papua New Guinea, In South Asia, the best performing country is India (51)
The Republic of Congo, Sudan, Angola and Mauritania. Figure 1 followed by Sri Lanka (71) and Pakistan (82). The list is closed
illustrates the relative levels of economic complexity of coun- by Bangladesh (103).
tries in Ranking 1 by plotting ECI as a function of a country’s Finally, In Sub-Saharan Africa the most complex econo-
current level of GDP per capita. In Map 1, countries are color mies are South Africa (55), Namibia (72), Kenya (73), Senegal
coded according to their position in ranking 1. (74) and Mauritius (77). The worst performers are Guinea
Interestingly the least complex countries in Western Eu- (123), the Republic of Congo (125), Sudan (126), Angola (127)
rope are Portugal (35) and Greece (53), two countries whose and Mauritania (128). We note that many African countries
high income cannot be explained by either their complexity are not in the rank because they did not satisfy our data filter-
or their natural resource wealth. We do not think that this is ing criteria (see Part 1, Section 7: Which countries are in the Atlas?).
unrelated to their present difficulties: their current income In the Middle East and North Africa, the best perform-
has been propped up by massive capital inflows and, as these ers are Israel (19), Lebanon (44), Jordan (45), Tunisia (47) and
decline to more sustainable levels, the internal weaknesses Egypt (53). The worst performers are Kuwait (116), Iran (118)
come to the fore. The ECI, however, illustrates clearly how and Libya (119), where the overwhelming presence of oil indi-
these mismatches can be identified from the data. cates a narrow base of productive knowledge.