Atlas of Economic Complexity
New projections from the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School suggest that Vietnam and China are positioned to lead global growth in the decade ahead, driven by their sophisticated and diverse manufacturing capabilities. The findings, released in the latest Atlas of Economic Complexity using 2024 data, forecast that economies that have built complex productive capabilities will drive the world’s economic expansion for the coming decade, even as rising trade tensions threaten to disrupt their growth trajectories.
Vietnam is projected to lead all nations in GDP per capita growth, followed closely by China, a remarkable forecast for the world’s second-largest economy. “Vietnam and China remain more complex than expected for their income level, so they will continue to lead global growth in the coming decade,” said Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Growth Lab, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the leading researcher of The Atlas of Economic Complexity. “Countries that have diversified their production into more complex sectors are those that will lead global growth.”
The growth projections are grounded in the Growth Lab’s Economic Complexity Index (ECI), which captures the diversity and sophistication of the productive capabilities embedded in each country’s exports. The research finds that ECI closely explains differences in country incomes today—and predicts future growth. Countries whose economic complexity exceeds what would be expected for their current income levels are best positioned for rapid economic growth.
Growth over the coming decade is projected to concentrate in three global poles: East Asia, Central Asia, and East Africa. Several Asian economies already hold the necessary economic complexity to drive the fastest growth through 2034, led by Vietnam, China, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. Central Asia and Baltic countries hold strong growth potential from their continued advances in economic complexity, with Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, and Latvia all ranking in the projected top 15 economies on a per capita basis.
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