Living in a world where we can expand our economic wealth and the richness of human life is the core of the human development concept. Greater well-being for all can be achieved by improving people’s capabilities and more importantly, by giving individuals the ability to use their knowledge and skills. The economic complexity index (i.e., ECI) is a new indicator that defines a country’s complexity. Through a vast network, citizens can transfer an enormous quantity of relevant knowledge, leading to the creation of diversified and complex products. However, the relationship between economic complexity and human development is not that simple. Thus, this paper aimed to understand it deeper—international migration and logistics performance are used as moderators. Hierarchical linear modeling was the statistical tool used to analyze two groups of countries from 1990 to 2017. For robustness and to deal with possible endogeneity issues, different year lags were also included. The results show that international migration and logistics performance are decisive moderators as they change the relationship between economic complexity and human development.
Economic complexity, human capital and income inequality: a cross-country analysis