Trade glossary · measurement
Economic Complexity Index (ECI)
Also known as: ECI
A ranking of countries by the diversity and sophistication of their export portfolios. Developed by Hidalgo and Hausmann at Harvard's Growth Lab.
The ECI uses a recursive algorithm: a country is "complex" if it exports many products that few other countries export, and a product is "complex" if it's exported only by complex countries. The result is a ranking that has predicted long-run growth better than standard GDP-per-capita controls. Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and South Korea consistently top the ECI; commodity exporters and least-developed countries score lowest.
Examples
- Japan ranks #1 globally in ECI most years.
- Germany, Switzerland, and South Korea round out the top 5.
- Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and other oil-dependent economies rank in the bottom third.
Authoritative source: Atlas of Economic Complexity ↗
Related terms
Product space
A network of products where proximity reflects how often countries export them together. Used to predict which new products a country could plausibly start exporting.
Revealed comparative advantage (RCA)
An index of how specialized a country is in exporting a particular product, relative to that product's share of world trade. RCA > 1 means above-average specialization.