Stats like these have a certain bias towards smaller countries where it's "easier" to concentrate high levels of complexity. If e.g. California was taken separately, it would likely rank very high. Japan's size and ranking make it look quite exceptional.
I'm not sure California would rank that highly - the index measures diversification AND sophistication. Isn't most of California's economy based around a few big companies in the tech and entertainment sectors?
By contrast, Japan, Switzerland and Czechia make basically a little bit of everything. (For different reasons, I think - Japan is obviously a large country, Switzerland's companies are in a lot of supply chains, and Czechia is centrally located in Europe, so it has specialized manufacturing for which you really only need one factory per continent, like cassette tapes.)
I'm guessing the overall US ratings are depressed by the dominance of some big sectors, like tech and housing?
Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about, I just read the definitions and have a newspaper subscription.
EDIT: Actually, you don't have to guess - the site's country profiles explain it pretty well:
> I'm not sure California would rank that highly - the index measures diversification AND sophistication. Isn't most of California's economy based around a few big companies in the tech and entertainment sectors?
CA, just in the Bay Area, has got 11% of world market cap with half of the top 15 public co's. These businesses are very sophisticated (practically no one in the world can replicate) and the rest of the economy is huge in many other areas like agriculture (half of US fruits / nuts, still exports internationally), film and media with Hollywood and Netflix, major ports to some of the world's most valuable trading partners (China and Japan), a top notch robust public university system (23 California State Universities and the 10 premier University of California's that lead the way in cutting research), and other RnD like Lawrence Livermore Lab, JPL, SpaceX, etc.
It’s not an attack on you, or a value judgement about California.
The index ranks the state lower than the rest of the country. I read the definition and I’m speculating why that is. You’re saying “yeah, well, we’re awesome.” Sure? The state is obviously very rich. A technical indicator is not destiny.
First, it didn't sound like California had a separate sub-rank in the index ranking. That's why GP speculated it would be much higher outside of the US, and you also speculated why it wouldn't be very different ("I'm not sure California would rank that highly"). I also provided my reasoning why CA would be higher outside of the US, because it hasn't been pointed out that CA even had an index independent of the US. It wasn't to be "we're awesome." It was to provide the material reasons why I would speculate it's economic complexity would be high in the state level rankings. If the index ranking provided a state-level ranking, I would be interested in seeing that. I'm not able to find it navigating their site.
- 6. Czechia
- 9. Slovenia
- 11. Hungary
- 14. USA
Stats like these have a certain bias towards smaller countries where it's "easier" to concentrate high levels of complexity. If e.g. California was taken separately, it would likely rank very high. Japan's size and ranking make it look quite exceptional.