Economic complexity and embedding of regional economies’ structures

Abstract

 The research focuses on the development of localized specialization and economic diversification theories. Our task is forecasting of the emergence of new strong sectors in the region. On the basis of probabilistic and statistical modeling the model which allows estimating the probability of appearing a new strong sector in the region taking into account characteristics of economic structure is constructed. The possibility of building such a model is based on the assumption that the emergence and development of sectors is largely determined by the evolution of past economic activity. The model uses the indicators of embedding structures of the strong sectors in the regional economies is introduced by the authors. These indicators are based on the probabilistic interpretation and properties of the elements of the matrix, by which economic complexity is estimated following the traditional approach. The probability of originating a strong sector in the structure for each region is estimated. Based on sorting the sectors according to the value of these probabilities and assessments of their potential contribution to socio-economic development expert assessment of the feasibility of developing a new strong sector in the region can be made. The results show that sectors’ introduction and generation in the regional economy is largely due to the evolution of the past economic activity.