Why do some countries grow and others do not? The authors of The Atlas of Economic Complexity offer readers an explanation based on "Economic Complexity," a measure of a society’s productive knowledge. Prosperous societies are those that have the knowledge to make a larger variety of more...

Countries differ markedly in the diversification of their exports. Products differ in the number of countries that export them, which we define as their ubiquity. We document a new stylized fact in the global pattern of exports: there is a systematic relationship between the diversification of a...

In economic systems, the mix of products that countries make or export has been shown to be a strong leading indicator of economic growth. Hence, methods to characterize and predict the structure of the network connecting countries to the products that they export are relevant for understanding...

We study the structure of international aid coordination by creating and analyzing a tripartite network of donor organizations, recipient countries and development issues using web-based information. We develop a measure of coordination and find that it is moderate, achieving about 60% of its...

The literature on knowledge diffusion shows that knowledge decays strongly with distance. In this paper we document that the probability a product is added to a country?s export basket is, on average, 65% larger if a neighboring country is a successful exporter of that same product. For existing...

This paper argues that current account statistics may provide a poor indication for the real evolution of a country's net foreign assets. This may be due to a series of factors including the mismeasurement of FDI, unreported trade of insurance or liquidity services and debt relief. Because of...

This paper considers ongoing and proposed reforms of the international financial system in light of Latin America's recent experience of volatility and a regional recession largely resulting from financial contagion. The authors begin by surveying three diagnoses of Latin America's financial...

This paper discusses a variety of proposals intended to reform global financial architecture and reduce vulnerability. The authors examine Theories of Too Much, which associate volatility with moral hazard and excessive lending, and Theories of Too Little, which alternatively assert that capital...