Bibliometric review of research on economic complexity: current trends, developments, and future research directions

Abstract

The growing literature on the issues of economic complexity makes it challenging to achieve a comprehensive multidimensional picture of the current problem for beneficiaries, policymakers, and future research. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 272 documents published in the field of economic complexity since 2007 and extracted from the Scopus database. Results are presented through figures, tables, maps of past trends and research directions using keyword analysis, global citation analysis of authors, organizations, countries, journals, articles, references, content analysis, and other bibliometric analysis via VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and WordStat software. A bibliometric review was applied to identify four clusters: Economic Growth, Diversification, Income Inequality, and Ecological Footprint. Finally, the state of the art in economic complexity research is discussed, and directions for future research are provided.

Keywords: Economic complexity, Systematic literature review, Economic growth, Diversification, Income inequality.