Building a bridge between economic complexity and the blue economy

Abstract

A country's product portfolio can predict its subsequent development of diversification and economic growth patterns. However, how does the sustainable portfolio of blue products predict the development degree of the blue economy? Herein, we combine the methods of network science (i.e., the product space) and economic complexity (i.e., the product complexity and country complexity) to draw the world blue product space for 2017 and the evolution maps of blue product space between China and the U.S. from 1995 to 2015 and rank the 66 blue products and 235 countries and territories, respectively. We find that (i) high-income countries are the main exporters of more complex blue products, while low-income countries are the main exporters of less sophisticated blue products. We also find that (ii) the export shares of the more sophisticated blue products increase with the complexity of the blue economy, while the export shares of the less sophisticated blue products decrease with the complexity of the blue economy. Finally, we find that (iii) the diversity development level of the blue economy is directly proportional to income; that is, countries with higher income have a greater level of blue economic diversity, and vice versa. These findings show that network science and economic complexity obtain information about the development level of the blue economy, and they can be used as an additional policy analysis combination for measuring the extent of sustainable economic development in different countries.