战略多样化：利用经济复杂性摆脱商品依赖的经验见解

March 2026UNCTAD/WP/2026/2 Strategic diversification:Empirical insights for leveraging Abstract Export diversification has long been promoted to reduce commodity dependence,yet its empirical relationship with commodity dependence may be more complexthan traditionally understood. Using data from 183 countries between 1995 and2019, this paper explores how economic complexity, a measure of the sophisticationand technological intensity of a country's productive capacities, affects commoditydependence. This approach provides a more comprehensive understanding ofhow countries can design policies moving beyond diversification, shifting focusfrom the number of exports to the types of exportable products and the localproductive capacities required to produce them. While the relationship betweencomplexity and commodity dependence contains a definitional component in thatcommodities are inherently less complex products, the empirical analysis quantifiesthe magnitude of this association, uncovering heterogeneity across developmentstages, and identifying conditions under which complexity most effectively reducescommodity reliance. The results from a fixed effects model find that diversificationtowards higher complexity sectors significantly reduces commodity dependence. Clovis FreireExtractive CommoditiesSection, Division onInternational Trade and Sofia DominguezCosimo FronteraExtractive CommoditiesSection, Division onInternational Trade andCommodities, UNCTAD Economic complexity, strategic diversification, commodity #13March 2026 Contents 1.Introduction........................................................................ 32.Economic complexity and commodity dependence....... 63.Estimation approach....................................................... 113.1Theoretical model..............................................................123.2Empirical specification........................................................153.3Data sources and variable definitions.................................173.4Descriptive statistics..........................................................184.Regression results........................................................... 224.1Results..............................................................................224.2Robustness checks...........................................................265.Conclusions.................................................................... 29References.............................................................................. 31Appendix...........................................................................34A.Computation of the modified economic complexity index...34B.Diagnostic tests.................................................................35C.Countries in the analysis (full sample).................................37 Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Luz Maria de La Mora, Anida Yupari Aguado, GrahamMott and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. 1.Introduction Economic diversification and complexity together are vital for sustainablegrowth, especially for commodity-dependent developing countries (CDDCs).UNCTAD defines an economy as commodity-dependent when over 60 percent of merchandise export revenues come from primary commodities,such as food and agricultural raw materials, fuels, and minerals. In 2021, 101countries met this criterion, of which 95 were developing countries and 34least developed countries (UNCTAD, 2023a). These countries face significantchallenges, as their reliance on commodity exports renders them highlyvulnerable to external shocks stemming from volatility in commodity prices. Export diversification indicates the degree to which an economy exports productsacross various sectors or trading partners and can mitigate the risks of commoditydependenceby enhancing resilience,stabilising revenues,and creating jobsand growth (Dominguez and Nkurunziza, 2024). However, while diversification isconceptually straightforward, its empirical relationship with commodity dependencemay be more complex. Traditional measures of diversification focus on export marketconcentration or deviations from global trade patterns, offering a broad overview of Alternatively, an economy could diversify into commodity and non-commodity sectorssimultaneously or increase commodity exports in quantities that outweigh the growthin the number of products exported. In such cases, the commodity export ratio would Increasing the number of products exported does not automatically reduce relianceon commodities, this is where economic complexity provides deeper insights. Whilediversification captures export variety, economic complexity measures an economy’ssophistication and technological intensity, based on the diversity and ubiquity of itsexports (Hidalgo and Hausmann, 2009).2In this context, diversity refers to the numberof products exported by a country, while ubiquity refers to the number of countriesexporting