This paper provides an explication of the Method of Reflections developed by Hidalgo and Hausmann and a critique of their interpretation of the variables that it produces. They show that a quantity they identify with the average complexity of a country’s exports is correlated with log income....

The proof of the existence of the Standard commodity contained in Sraffa's book (section 37) has been debated recently. Lippi (2008) has argued that the algorithm in section 37 of Sraffa’s book is not precisely stated and does not need to converge to the desired eigenvalue and eigenvector. In...