Ricardo Hausmann for Project Syndicate

Vigorous economic competition certainly has a place in today’s world. But economists may currently be overly reliant on this default approach, attributing to a lack of discipline outcomes that may instead result from insufficient solidarity and concern.

Ricardo Hausmann, Growth Lab research in Daily Maverick

The economist Ricardo Hausmann has set out very clearly what an economy like South Africa can do to work its way out of the current crisis. Hausmann and his team of MIT-Harvard economists developed an enormous dataset contained in the Atlas of Economic Complexity, freely available on the internet.

The concept of economic complexity holds that wealth is created not so much by one particular industry, but by a dense network of industrial...

The Atlas of Economic Complexity in the Wall Street Journal

Now that the West fears losing its economic lead, it is slowly shifting gears. On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed a $250 billion bill designed to help American companies face off against China, which includes building up domestic semiconductor capacity. The EU is granting antitrust exemptions to climate-focused industrial policy.

Yet Northern Europe seems more predisposed to identify favored sectors. Italian and Spanish officials remain reluctant, even though the Harvard Kennedy School of...

Atlas of Economic Complexity in the Wall Street Journal

The uncertainty and the ensuing pandemic have dramatically slowed business investment. Gross fixed investment from both the government and business fell 4.6% during 2019, Mr. López Obrador’s first full year in power, and then another 18.2% in 2020, according to figures from the national statistics institute. Foreign direct investment for the past two years has been down about $5 billion a year to $30 billion.

Mexico's economy has diversified substantially since opening up more than three decades ago....