For Adam Smith, wealth was related to the division of labor. As people and firms specialize
in different activities, economic efficiency increases, suggesting that development is
associated with an increase in the number of individual activities and with the complexity
that emerges from the interactions between them. Here we develop a view of economic
growth and development that gives a central role to the complexity of a country's economy
by interpreting trade data as a bipartite network in which countries are connected to the …