Research Information System
Parion Akademik Bakış, vol.1, no.2, pp.127-136, 2021 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
Economic theory debates that sustainable economic growth occurs through economic development.
Successful development strategies substantially depend on a fast pace of growth and measured pace of
economic openness. In this context, the Economic Complexity Index (ECI), which is the compound of a
country's productive output have provided important insights into patterns of economic development.
This study investigates the impact of the Human Development Index (HDI) on ECI in selected 24 OECD
countries. Using panel data methodology for the period 1995-2018, the results of the study show that
there has been a unidirectional causality running from economic complexity to human development in
five developed countries, but human development Granger cause economic complexity in six countries. In
addition, the feedback effect exists between human development and economic complexity for Spain at the
5% level of significance, indicating that both economic complexity and human development are
influencing each other. Thus, the study emphasizes that for increasing the knowledge intensity of selected
country groups there is a need to increase their accumulation of human capital in selected OECD
countries.
Keywords: human development; product diversification; economic complexity.