In this paper, we investigate the nature of the density metric, which is employed in the literature on smart specialization and the product space. We find that although density is supposed to capture relatedness between a country's current specialization pattern and potential products that it...

We aim to contribute to the literature on product space and diversification by proposing a number of extensions of the current literature: (1) we propose that the alternative but related idea of a country space also has empirical and theoretical appeal; (2) we argue that the loss of comparative...