Jorge Valvedere is a PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT.
His research project seeks to contribute to the economic development literature by deepening in the product-space approach and incorporating it into the economic growth theory. In this sense, the research focuses on providing a proper theoretical framework to understand the linkages and dynamics between the information given by the product-space approach and the economic growth process carried on within the production system.
In this regard, the study addresses three main challenges: i) Developing a theoretical endogenous growth model that incorporates the fitness-complexity index into its structure through the technological change modelling, ii) Empirically estimating the model by using panel data and time series techniques, to test the central hypothesis of this research, the effect of each component to the economic growth and the consistency of the underlying economic growth model, and iii) Deepening in the technological change equation of the growth model by developing a cost-benefit model using the product-space approach, which allows finding technological opportunities based on the relatedness and complexity of the products.
