Economic Complexity Index — Selected Economies
The ECI measures the productive knowledge embedded in an economy, computed from the diversity and ubiquity of its competitive exports (Hidalgo & Hausmann). Each economy is mapped to a rung of the Q·DIKI Maturity Ladder. Select any economy — the dossier, the ladder, the product space and the diversification frontier below all re-reference to it.
The DIKI Ladder — Complexity Bands as Cognitive Rungs
THE Q AGENCY reading: ECI bands proxy the dominant cognitive mode of an economy's productive apparatus, mapped to the Data → Information → Knowledge → Intelligence progression of the IBE framework.
Capability Adjacency — Product Space
The product space is invariant; economies differ in which regions of it they occupy. Gold nodes mark clusters where the selected economy holds revealed comparative advantage; ringed nodes are adjacent, higher-complexity opportunities reachable from its capability base; grey nodes are distant. The strategic question is always the short jump to the more complex neighbour.
Diversification Frontier
Adjacent clusters ranked by the classic trade-off: complexity gain (how far the jump lifts the knowledge intensity of the export basket, relative to the economy's current basket average) against capability distance (how far the jump is from the nearest established capability). Both quantities are computed live from the space for the selected economy.
Method & Sources
Computation
ECI follows the method of Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009, PNAS) and the Atlas of Economic Complexity (Hausmann et al.): exports at HS 4-digit level are binarised by Revealed Comparative Advantage (Balassa), and country complexity is recovered from the diversity–ubiquity structure via the method of reflections / eigenvector formulation. ECI has been shown to predict long-run growth more robustly than standard aggregates; the Product Space predicts the direction of future diversification at product level.
Multi-economy architecture (v0.2)
The console uses a single fixed product-space stylisation of 24 capability clusters with an adjacency graph. Each economy is encoded as a set of occupied (RCA ≥ 1) clusters and a set of adjacent opportunity clusters. Frontier metrics are derived live: complexity gain = cluster PCI minus the economy's basket-average PCI; capability distance = normalised distance from the cluster to the nearest occupied cluster in the space. Frontier economies (Intelligence rung) naturally show few remaining opportunities — their strategic frame shifts from catching up to standard-setting.
The IBE reading
Within the Intelligence-Based Economy framework, ECI is treated as an external, trade-revealed proxy for the position of an economy on the DIKI ladder. The Q-Monad view sharpens the interpretation: complexity is accumulated decisional capability — what an economy's organisations can collectively decide to make. The KBE→IBE Transition Index (Q·Diagnostics) measures at firm level what ECI measures at national level.
Data status
- ECI values are an illustrative series consistent with published rankings on c. 2021 trade data (Harvard Growth Lab). Production release will pin exact vintage and source.
- Cluster occupancy, adjacency and derived metrics are stylised for demonstration; production release computes them from UN Comtrade / BACI microdata.
- Services exports (notably ICT services strength in several CEE economies) are not captured by goods-based ECI — a stated limitation and a Q-research extension point.