page_title: The Product Space
section_title: Dynamics of the Product Space
hierarchical_section_title: The Product Space / Dynamics of the Product Space
caption_attribution_description: English: Localization of the productive structure for different regions of the world, based on the Product Space dynamics.
context_page_description: The Product Space is a network that formalizes the idea of relatedness between products traded in the global economy. The network first appeared in the July 2007 issue of Science in the article "The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations," written by Cesar A. Hidalgo, Bailey Klinger, Ricardo Hausmann, and Albert-László Barabási. The Product Space network has considerable implications for economic policy, as its structure helps elucidate why some countries undergo steady economic growth while others become stagnant and are unable to develop. The concept has been further developed and extended by The Observatory of Economic Complexity, through visualizations such as the Product Exports Treemaps and new indexes such as the Economic Complexity Index, which have been condensed into the Atlas of Economic Complexity. From the new analytic tools developed, Hausmann, Hidalgo and their team have been able to elaborate predictions of future economic growth.
context_section_description: The Product Space network can be used to study the evolution of a country's productive structure. A country's orientation within the space can be determined by observing where its products with RCA>1 are located. The images at right reveal patterns of specialization: the black squares indicate products exported by each region with RCA>1. 
   It can be seen that industrialized countries export products at the core, such as machinery, chemicals, and metal products. They also, however, occupy products at the periphery, like textiles, forest products, and animal agriculture. East Asian countries exhibit advantage in textiles, garments, and electronics. Latin America and the Caribbean have specialized in industries further towards the periphery, such as mining, agriculture, and garments. Sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates advantage in few product classes, all of which occupy the product space periphery. From these analyses, it is clear that each region displays a recognizable pattern of specialization easily discernible in the product space.
caption: Localization of the productive structure for different regions of the world. The products for which the region has an RCA > 1 are denoted by black squares.
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