The European Commission puts a growing emphasis on the smart specialization as a tool of regional development. This term is present in a number of strategic development documents in the European Union, including Europe 2020, published by the European Commission in 2010. It implies the need for countries and regions to specialize as well as focus the development of innovation on areas that are consistent with their endogenous potentials. Objectives...

This paper contributes to trade diversification literature by comparing changes in relative (i.e. assessed in comparison with world patterns) heterogeneity of import and export structures in the process of economic development. In particular, by focusing on the diversification of imports, we add a missing piece to already analysed export trends. We use highly disaggregated trade statistics (4963 product lines) for 163 countries...

This paper contributes to the literature on the evolution of overall specialisation along the process of economic development by simultaneously estimating 'specialisation curves' emerging from fully comparable employment and export statistics in a sample of 32 economies (1980-2000). We apply semiparametric estimation methods, which allow us to combine the flexibility of the estimation with the inclusion of country-specific effects,...

This paper compares two alternative growth paths, assessing the effects on productivity of specialisation in natural resources (NR) and in technologically advanced products. The empirical analysis exploits product-level export data for 109 developing and 51 developed economies over the period 1996–2018. We document two distinct types of specialisation, based on exports either of natural resources or of technological products, and...