 How rich countries became rich and why poor countries remain poor: It's the economic structure…duh!Jesus Felipe (), Utsav Kumar and Arnelyn Abdon Japan and the World Economy, 2014, vol. 29, issue C, 46-58 Abstract: Becoming a rich country requires being able to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 commodities (exported) according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the income content of the products exported) and (2) connectivity to other products (measured by how easy it is to ‘jump’ into other potential exports). We identify 88 “good” products (highly sophisticated and well connected products), 93 “bad” products (unsophisticated and poorly connected products), and 598 “middle” products. Then, we categorize 154 countries into four groups according to the export share of each of these three types of products. There are 21 countries whose export baskets contain at least 15% of “good” products; 41 countries with a significant share of relatively sophisticated and well connected products; 50 countries with a significant share of relatively unsophisticated and not well connected products; and 42 countries whose export basket contains at least 15% of “bad” products. Keywords: Bad product; Good product; Proximity; Sophistication; Structural transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:japwor:v:29:y:2014:i:c:p:46-58 DOI: 10.1016/j.japwor.2013.11.004 Access Statistics for this article Japan and the World Economy is currently edited by Robert Dekle and Yasushi Hamao More articles in Japan and the World Economy from Elsevier |
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