More on Cesar Hidalgo's Works

Cesar Hidalgo’s research focuses on the dynamical aspects of social and biological phenomena. He specialized in the analysis of large data sets in an empirically driven approach to understand the interplay between the structure and the dynamics of the networks defined by systems. His current research agenda at Harvard University focuses mainly in the study of economic development from the perspective of complexity and network science. In particular, he studies the evolution of countries’ productive structures, both empirically and theoretically, by looking at how the development process is shaped by the similarity between a country’s products and the capabilities that go into producing them.

The CID Working Paper No. 201 of Ricardo Hausmann and Cesar Hidalgo entitled Country diversification, product ubiquity, and economic divergence studies the characteristics of the relationship between products and countries that make them. They were able to document a new stylized fact in the global pattern of exports: that there is a systematic relationship between the diversification of a country’s exports and the ubiquity of its products. Such relationship cannot be explained simply by distribution of diversification of countries or by the distribution of the ubiquity of products, but speaks to a more fundamental link between the two. This fact, according to them, is not implied by current theories of international trade. They provided a model for such link which assumes that each product requires a varied and potentially large set of different complementary non-tradable inputs called capabilities.

Countries differ in the number of capabilities that are present in their territory while products differ in the number of capabilities they require. As a consequence, countries with more capabilities will be more diversified, and products that require more capabilities will be accessible to fewer countries, and hence will be less ubiquitous. The model also implies that the return to the accumulation of new capabilities increases exponentially (2^Na to be exact) with the number of capabilities already available in a country.

Moreover, they found out that the convexity of the increase in diversification associated with the accumulation of a new capability increases when either the total number of capabilities that exist in the world increases or the average complexity of products, defined as the number of capabilities products require, increases.

This convexity defines what they termed as quiescence trap, or a trap of economic stasis: countries with few capabilities will have negligible or no return to the accumulation of more capabilities, while at the same time countries with many capabilities will experience large returns – in terms of increased diversification – to the accumulation of additional capabilities.

The model is calibrated to three data sets. It showed that the derived functional forms reproduce the empirically observed distributions of product ubiquity, the relationship between the diversification of countries and the average ubiquity of the products they export, and the distribution of the probability that two products are co-exported. This calibration shows that the global economy is composed of a large number of capabilities – between 23 and 80, depending on the level of disaggregation of the data – and that products require on average a relatively large fraction of these capabilities in order to be produced. The conclusion of this calibration is that the world exists in a regime where the quiescence trap is strong.

CESAR HIDALGO AND HIS WORKS

              Who is Cesar Hidalgo? To tell you frankly, we do not have even any idea regarding Cesar Hidalgo. But after typing the twelve letters on the search engine Google, we were amazed by what we learned. So, if you also want to learn more about this remarkable person, continue readingJ. We strongly suggest that you try to check the works of Cesar Hidalgo.

The Man behind the Complexity, Evolution and Network Science

            Cesar Hidalgo was born in Santiago de Chile, on the 22^nd day of December in the year 1979. He entered the Physics program at the Pontificia Universidad Catόlica de Chile starting 1998 and graduating in 2003, under the advisory of Francis Claro, PhD. On August 2004, he entered the Physics PhD Program at the University of Notre Dame and joined the Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) directed by Laszlo Barabasi. As a member of CCNR and a Notre Dame grad student, he worked at the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute from Harvard University, between September 2005 and July 2006. On the fall of 2007, the CCNR moved to Northeastern University, yet he remained a Notre Dame student and he finished working on his dissertation from Boston. He defended his dissertation at Notre Dame on July 2008, with Laszlo Barabasi being his PhD thesis advisor. In September 2008, he joined the Center for International Development at Harvard University as a research fellow. In September 2009, he was appointed Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. In August 2010, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory as an Assistant Professor in Media Arts and Science.

            Hidalgo’s work focuses on improving the understanding of systems by using and developing concepts of complexity, evolution, and network science; his goal is to improve understanding of the evolution of prosperity in order to help develop industrial policies that can help countries raise the living standards of their citizens. His areas of application include economic development, systems biology, and social systems. Hidalgo is also a graphic art enthusiast and has published and exhibited artwork that uses data collected originally for scientific purposes.

            And in the field of research, this man has done some fascinating stuff which others may consider impossible. Thanks to him and his colleagues, we are able to see the global economy and mobility of networks by applying the science of networks. By looking at Hidalgo’s work, you will notice the incorporation of art to every network. His works encompasses the boundary between art and science; it is indeed a combination of the two.

            Try to look at the image below, what is your initial description of it?

            Is it an art? Is it a graphical illustration?

            The answer is both. Probably, most people who will see the diagram above will say that it is an excellent work of art. Indeed, it is an art that is worth a thousand words. Technically, it really is. But only few people will notice that it is not only an image made by imagination but also an image crafted through long periods of scientific studies. This art can be of great help in solving our present economic problems.

            Cesar Hidalgo is recently focusing on development economics. He argues that the best predictor of an economic future is the diversity of its production capacity rather than its magnitude. And an economy which uses more inputs in their production adapts better to any changes in the world economy. And by using his mathematical tools, Hidalgo concluded that products which use a lot of inputs are scarcer than those which do not. He is also able to quantitatively assess the diversity of a country’s input by analyzing the economy’s products and the number of other economies capable of producing the same products.

            In every work of this exceptional man, science, mathematics, and visual arts are embraced effectively especially in studying the complexity of our economies and other various issues. He has shown the ability of man to incorporate his ideas and perceptions of the world in calculative and beautiful ways.