Atlas

China Is Exporting More Sophisticated Products Despite Trade War

August 3, 2021

Tim Cheston, Atlas ECI Rankings in Bloomberg News

The technological level of China’s exports increased through the trade war with the U.S., according to a new ranking, which predicts the Chinese economy will grow faster than India’s over the next decade.

China ranked 16th globally when judged by the complexity of its exports in 2019, moving up three places ahead of countries including Ireland since the onset of the trade war in 2018, according to a new study by Harvard University’s Growth Lab.

The index measures the diversity and technological...

Big Government Is Turbo-Charging the U.S. Economy. Can It Transform Europe?

June 11, 2021

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...

Is Mexico’s President a Threat to Its Democracy?

June 4, 2021

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....

El atlas que Pedro Sánchez debe consultar

February 24, 2021

The Atlas of Economic Complexity in El Mundo

Hay una herramienta económica que debería ocupar un lugar central en la definición de los proyectos que aspiren a los fondos europeos de recuperación y resiliencia que gestiona el Gobierno: el Atlas de Complejidad Económica, un proyecto de la Universidad de Harvard que coloca las capacidades industriales y los conocimientos técnicos de un país en el centro de sus perspectivas de crecimiento. Este mapa permitiría concentrar esfuerzos en sectores con alto potencial para el país.

The pandemic dealt a blow to global trade and revived an old dream: Self-reliance

December 23, 2020

The Atlas of Economic Complexity in The Washington Post

When the pandemic hit, Ghana called on companies to change gears. Shirtmakers switched to cotton masks. A cosmetics lab churned out hand sanitizer. Dress sewers crafted face shields.

Those goods normally came from Chinese factories, but China had largely closed for business. Beijing’s shipments to Ghana plunged by nearly 50 percent in March, sending the West African nation of 31 million scrambling for backups.

Australia is rich, dumb and getting dumber

October 8, 2019

Arron Patrick - Financial Review

Bangladesh, Cuba, Iran, Mali and Turkmenistan share an unexpected connection to Australia, and it isn't membership of a tourist destination hot list.

All are among the economies that are so lacking in complexity, and have such limited natural opportunities to develop new products, that Harvard University recommends they adopt industrial policy straight out of the post-colonial developing world: the "strategic bets" approach.

The advice comes from the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for International Development,...

Markets Are Starting to Play a Haunting 2007 Tune

September 18, 2019

John Authers - Bloomberg

...Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government has made it his life’s work to understand why some economies grow faster than others, and therefore which countries are likely to grow next. He believes the answer lies in economic complexity. To paraphrase, countries that develop complex industries with transferable skills are able to grow much faster. Countries that do nothing more than extract raw materials and don’t diversify (like Hausmann’s native Venezuela), have little chance of growth. Those that develop know-how...

China Risks, Unlike Mexico Tariffs, Aren't Vanishing

June 11, 2019

John Authers - Bloomberg

...Which countries will manage to notch the fastest growth over the next decade? Nobody can know for certain, but Harvard’s Center for International Development has gone to great lengths to try to find out. Its key insight is that growth hinges on economic complexity. The more different skills a population has developed, and the more adaptable its economy, the better its chances of expansion. The more dependent it remains on one industry, the harder it is to achieve growth. It measures this phenomenon in a fascinating and public...

Indonesia and the Quest for 7% Growth: Overpromise or Underperformance?

April 16, 2019

By Timothy Cheston
Visualizations by: Nil Tuzcu

Indonesians head to the polls for presidential and legislative elections on April 17, in what is traditionally billed as a clash of titans in the world’s third largest democracy. This time around, voters will find familiar names on the presidential ballot, as Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, faces Prabowo Subianto in the same billing as the 2014 election, with the one exception of Jokowi now having the incumbency of the presidency behind him. If current polls hold, the election appears less of a rematch than a watered-...