The time and frequency of unrelated diversification

Flávio L. Pinheiro, Dominik Hartmann, Ron Boschma () and Cesar Hidalgo

Research Policy, 2022, vol. 51, issue 8

Abstract: Economic diversification—the process by which locations enter new economic activities—is known to be a combination of related and unrelated diversification. Related diversification is—on average—more frequent, but unrelated diversification is nevertheless considered important to avoid economic lock-in. Here, we study the frequency and timing of unrelated diversification using two international trade datasets at the country level. We find that related diversification is more frequent for countries at low levels of development but becomes less frequent as countries climb the complexity ladder. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of relatedness in the diversification of economies at different levels of complexity.

Keywords: Unrelated diversification; Economic complexity; Economic development; Relatedness; Diversification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733321001244
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:51:y:2022:i:8:s0048733321001244

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2021.104323

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().