César Hidalgo's work focuses on improving the understanding of systems by using and developing concepts of complexity, evolution, and network science. 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.
His goal is to help 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. He is a native of Santiago de Chile, Hidalgo holds a PhD in physics from the University of Notre Dame and a bachelor's degree in physics from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.LYN
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“Repeated interactions can contribute to the loss of diversity. This is a trade-off that you cannot avoid… Diversity is the key to adaptivity, resilience, and innovation.” (Hidalgo, 2008)
Cesar Hidalgo, stressed the need for awareness of the potential of a “tragedy of the networks,” in which a network’s natural loss of diversity over time incurs a loss of adaptive capacity, resilience, and innovation. He stated a careful brokering of collaboration of key leaders and connector personalities could prevent this, orchestrating change in a manner that optimizes network performance in both supporting diversity and preserving crucial network ties. LYN
The most important unsolved problem of the last century is how to make a rich country out of a poor one. Development economists have many theories about how the trick is done but few proven answers. Thanks to César A. Hidalgo of the M.I.T. Media Lab, we can now visualize the differences between national economies in new ways. Hidalgo is a statistical physicist fascinated by the structure of networks, and along with the Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann, he has been developing tools designed to study not just economic wealth but also economic structure and sophistication. His works seeks to improve the understanding of systems using and developing concepts of complexity, evolution and network science. These interests, combined with background in and knowledge of graphic design, all contributed to the development of the product space diagram.
Economies that export many types of products are more likely to be sophisticate and products exported only by sophisticated economies are more likely to be complex. However, sophistication and wealth do not always go hand in hand. When economies are relatively sophisticated but relatively poor, they often have the potential for quick growth. Hidalgo together with Hausmann have also mapped the world's "product space" using trade data on 774 product classifications, from cotton undergarments to phenols. The map shows not just the size of the world's economies, but also their interconnectedness and complexity, and the great differences between different types of economy. These product maps formulated by them lead to an uncomfortable conclusion about economic development that is, they hint at how difficult and complex it may be for government planners to kick-start a new industry, while showing that there are new industries that will struggle to get started without help.PEY
In terms of research, Cesar Hidalgo has done some absolutely incredible stuff; applying the new science of networks to the study of global economy (working with colleagues) and mobility within networks and he approaches networks as objects of art. Through his works, it is clear that the boundaries between art and science need not be so rigid.
According to Hidalgo (and his colleagues), economies grow by upgrading the type of products they produce and export. The technology, capital, institutions and skills needed to make such new products are more easily adapted from some products than others. They study the network of relatedness between products, or product space, finding that most upscale products are located in a densely connected core while lower income products occupy a less connected periphery. He shows that countries tend to move to goods close to those they are currently specialized in, allowing nations located in more connected parts of the product space to upgrade their exports basket more quickly. Most countries can reach the core only if they jump over empirically infrequent distances in the product space. This may help explain why poor countries have trouble developing more competitive exports, failing to converge to the income levels of rich countries.
One of his works also shows that the measures of complexity they derive are correlated with a country's level of income, and that deviations from this relationship are predictive of future growth. This suggests that countries tend to converge to the level of income dictated by the complexity of their productive structures, indicating that development efforts should focus on generating the conditions that would allow complexity to emerge in order to generate sustained growth and prosperity. AMA
According to Hidalgo (and his colleagues), economies grow by upgrading the type of products they produce and export. The technology, capital, institutions and skills needed to make such new products are more easily adapted from some products than others. They study the network of relatedness between products, or product space, finding that most upscale products are located in a densely connected core while lower income products occupy a less connected periphery. He shows that countries tend to move to goods close to those they are currently specialized in, allowing nations located in more connected parts of the product space to upgrade their exports basket more quickly. Most countries can reach the core only if they jump over empirically infrequent distances in the product space. This may help explain why poor countries have trouble developing more competitive exports, failing to converge to the income levels of rich countries.
One of his works also shows that the measures of complexity they derive are correlated with a country's level of income, and that deviations from this relationship are predictive of future growth. This suggests that countries tend to converge to the level of income dictated by the complexity of their productive structures, indicating that development efforts should focus on generating the conditions that would allow complexity to emerge in order to generate sustained growth and prosperity. AMA
