DaY 4

The EC economic rationale I

Lecturer: Bernardo Caldarola 

• Economic complexity as an empirical and theoretical perspective in evolutionary economics

• Capability accumulation and structural change

• The division of human knowledge

• What are we really measuring?

• On comparative advantages

The EC economic rationale II

Lecturer: Nanditha Mathew

• Micro capabilities for Macro economic growth and development

• Capabilities based theory of the firm

• Measurement of firm-level capabilities

• How EFC methods helps in validating the capability based theory of the firm

• How EFC tools link such theory of the firm to empirics and how the empirical evidence can be translated to policy

Break 10:30 - 11:00

Lunch 12:30 - 13:30

EU competitiveness in net-zero technologies: insights from patents and economic complexity 

Speaker: Giambattista Albora (JRC - European Commission)

One of the European Union’s top priorities is to close the innovation gap with countries such as the US and China while achieving climate neutrality. To this end, significant efforts are underway to identify technological sectors that are strategically relevant and offer the potential for the EU to become a globally competitive player. Economic Complexity can provide important contributions toward this objective. In this analysis, we focus on 15 net-zero technologies outlined in the Net-Zero Industry Act, leveraging patent data to identify in which of these technological areas the EU holds a strong base of technological capabilities. Using Natural Language Processing techniques to analyze patent abstracts and link them to net-zero technologies, we extract two key indicators: (i) the patent share of a country, i.e., the percentage of patents relevant to a given technology originating from that country, and (ii) the Technological Progression Probability (TPP), which measures the likelihood that a country will be active in a technological field. Using these indicators, we highlight areas of EU leadership (e.g., wind energy), missed opportunities (e.g., batteries, where Europe failed to establish leadership), zombie technologies (e.g., solar PV, with high patent activity but weak underlying capabilities), and seed technologies (e.g., nuclear energy, where strong foundations suggest promising competitive potential). We further perform detailed analyses at the Member State level to identify where specific technologies find the most fertile ground to flourish, for instance, Germany in electricity grid technologies and Italy in heat recovery technologies. Additionally, the approach allows for zooming into technology subclasses and variants. For example, while Carbon Capture and Storage shows limited prospects overall, a closer inspection reveals that the EU could achieve leadership in capture technologies, even if it remains weaker in storage and transport. To validate our findings, we compare them with the Competitiveness Progress Report on Clean Energy, an expert assessment of the EU’s competitiveness across the 15 net-zero technologies. Despite relying solely on patent data and without requiring specific technological expertise, our results show a remarkable alignment with expert evaluations.

Overview of the EFC group research lines

Speaker: Andrea Zaccaria (CNR-ISC – Institute for Complex Systems)

This talk will present an in-depth overview of the research lines pursued by the EFC group, highlighting the frontier applications of the Economic Fitness and Complexity framework introduced at the school. Particular focus will be given to areas such as: the integration of the EFC approach and information on Global Value Chains; labour-market based complexity indicators and the impact of AI on jobs; the dynamics of multi-scale and multi-dimensional productive and technological fitness and complexity indicators; the evaluation of firm-level complexity indicators; different applications linked to socio-economic sustainability; and the interplay between complexity, employment, and inequality.

Break 15:30 - 16:00

The future of Economic Complexity—Roundtable 

Panellists: Bart Verspagen (UNU-MERIT, University of Maastricht), Frank Neffke (Complexity Science Hub Vienna), Angelica Sbardella (CREF), Carla Sciarra (JRC - European Commission)

Moderator: Andrea Tacchella (CREF)

Free time

 Social dinner @ Il Girasole (Via del Boschetto, 28, 00184)