This paper investigates the link between overall specialization and growth, analyzing the shape of the relationship between the median of the sectoral distribution of the Balassa Index, our summary measure of overall specialization, and the level of per capita income. The median of the Balassa...

In this paper we investigate the empirical relationship between overall specialization and per capita income. The metric we use to measure overall specialization is the median of the sectoral distribution of the Balassa index of Revealed Comparative Advantages applied to 4-digit (SITC rev.2)...

It is customary in the empirical trade literature to analyze specialization patterns of countries using Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) measures. This paper explores the informational content of the most commonly used RCA index: the Balassa (1965) Index of RCA.After describing the...