Multidimensional economic complexity and inclusive green growth

Abstract

To achieve inclusive green growth, countries need to consider a multiplicity of economic, social, and environmental factors. These are often captured by metrics of economic complexity derived from the geography of trade, thus missing key information on innovative activities. To bridge this gap, we combine trade data with data on patent applications and research publications to build models that significantly and robustly improve the ability of economic complexity metrics to explain international variations in inclusive green growth. We show that measures of complexity built on trade and patent data combine to explain future economic growth and income inequality and that countries that score high in all three metrics tend to exhibit lower emission intensities. These findings illustrate how the geography of trade, technology, and research combine to explain inclusive green growth.