Economic Complexity, Inefficiency, and Comparative Advantage

Abstract

In this study, it was found that the degree of the industry complexity is related to the industry inefficiency degree and in this way affects the comparative advantage. For this purpose, factory industry data from twelve countries, including six developed countries and six less developed countries for the period 2011 to 2018 were used. By using the panel data method and the fixed effects technique, the impact of industry complexity on the degree of inefficiency was estimated for a set of selected developed and less developed countries. To measure economic complexity to the separation of industry from the average economic complexity of goods in that industry which is on the Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity website was used. The data envelopment analysis method has been used to estimate the inefficiency degree index in each industry. The results of the research showed that the degree of inefficiency of the industry in developed countries increases with the increase of the complexity of the industry up to the threshold of 0.2 and then decreases. While in less developed countries, the inefficiency degree decreased with increasing industry complexity to the -0.69 threshold and then increased. In addition, the findings showed that less developed countries have a comparative advantage in industries with complexity in the range of -1.1 to 0.48. The comparative advantage in developed countries is in the range of 0.48 to 1.1. The final result is that less developed countries do not have the capacity to produce complex goods due to high inefficiency degrees.

Keywords

• comparative advantage
• economic complexity
• institutionalism
• inefficiency