The Software Complexity of Nations

Abstract

Despite the growing importance of the digital sector, research on economic complexity and its implications continues to rely mostly on administrative records—e.g. data on exports, patents, and employment—that fail to capture the nuances of the digital economy. In this paper we use data on the geography of programming languages used in open-source software projects to extend economic complexity ideas to the digital economy. We estimate a country’s software economic complexity and show that it complements the ability of measures of complexity based on trade, patents, and research papers to account for international differences in GDP per capita, income inequality, and emissions. We also show that open-source software follows the principle of relatedness, meaning that a country’s software entries and exits are explained by specialization in related programming languages. We conclude by exploring the diversification and development of countries in open-source software in the context of large language models (LLMs). Together, these findings help extend economic complexity methods and their policy considerations to the digital sector.