2024/05/07 by Vito D. P. Servedio, Servedio, Vito D. P., Alessandro Bellina +5 · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) #Economic and Technological Innovation #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.04158
openalex publication_date 2024/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Initially designed to predict and explain the economic trajectories of countries, cities, and regions, economic complexity has been found applicable in diverse contexts such as ecology and chess openings. The success of economic complexity stems from its capacity to assess hidden capabilities within a system indirectly. The existing algorithms for economic complexity operate only when the underlying interaction topology conforms to a bipartite graph. A single link disrupting the bipartite structure renders these algorithms inapplicable, even if the weight of that link is tiny compared to others. This paper presents a novel extension of economic complexity to encompass any graph, overcoming the constraints of bipartite structures. Additionally, it introduces fitness centrality and orthofitness centrality as new centrality measures in graphs. Fitness Centrality emerges as a promising metric for assessing node vulnerability, akin to node betweenness centrality. Furthermore, we unveil the cost functions that drive the minimization procedures underlying the economic complexity index and fitness centrality algorithms. This extension broadens the scope of economic complexity analysis, enabling its application in diverse network structures beyond bipartite graphs.