Harvard's Growth Lab

At the Growth Lab, we place economic diversity and complexity at the center of any country, region, or city's growth story. How do economies become more complex? (1/12)

New student blog from Niklas Piringer, MPA/ID 2026 @Kennedy_School, who spent winter break in Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬. 🌏 His second-year policy analysis focuses on designing an economic growth strategy for the soon-to-be independent Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Its people overwhelmingly voted for independence in 2019. ⚒️ Niklas explores the idea of reopening the Panguna copper and gold mine, shuttered since 1989, and the source of the conflict that defined a generation. 🔍 Learn more about Niklas's journey as he met with key government and mining stakeholders to test his analysis. growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/how-do-you-fin…

.@ricardo_hausman with the breakfast analogy for industrial policy: "Are onions good? You might say, 'In what dish?' If you tell me an omelette, they're good. In coffee? They're not good. You cannot evaluate ingredients; you have to evaluate the dish, and industrial policy is always a dish... It's a combination of things." 📺youtube.com/live/S0u9pTj8D…

.@ricardo_hausman's keynote lecture, "Geopolitics and Democratic Legitimacy: The Case of #Venezuela in the Current International Scenario," for @frdelpino. 📺(español): youtube.com/watch?v=st3Yx-…

ICYMI: Industrial research labs powered the golden age of U.S. innovation 💡Analysis of 1.6 million patents finds that early-20th-century research labs and engineers sparked a surge in novel inventions and reshaped who innovates—and where. A summary of our latest research in the @harvard Gazette. Authors: Matte Hartog, @GomezLievano, @ricardo_hausman, @FrankNeffke. news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/…

Very happy to see this paper finally out. Enormous work with Matte Hartog, Andrés @GomezLievano and @FrankNeffke. How did the US organize its rise to technological prominence in the 1920s? Read this thread. Relevant lessons for middle-income countries today.

Links: Paper - Inventing modern invention: The professionalization of technological progress in the US sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Website: csh.ac.at/news/industria… Media release: eurekalert.org/news-releases/…

🔍 The researchers propose future examination of whether today’s organized corporate research once again promotes radical versus incremental innovation, to what extent women and immigrants participate, and how it may change the geographic concentration of innovation. (7/7)

How did the US transform from an agricultural economy to the frontier in science and innovation? A new paper published in Research Policy by a team of researchers at the @HarvardGrwthLab and @CSHVienna shows that this process was not gradual but prompted by abrupt changes clustered in the early 1920s. It was driven by the creation of the industrial research lab, which fostered large-scale, science-based, team-oriented invention. The findings suggest that new technologies, such as AI-powered digital collaboration tools, could play a similar role today by reducing coordination costs and potentially reshaping how collective invention is organized. Co-authors: Matte Hartog, @GomezLievano, @ricardo_hausman, and @FrankNeffke (1/7)

Check this out!

Links: ECI rankings: atlas.hks.harvard.edu/rankings Growth projections: atlas.hks.harvard.edu/growth-project… Explore the Atlas: atlas.hks.harvard.edu (3/3)

The biggest climber among complex economies? Israel 🇮🇱, up 11 positions to 8th, surging as a hub for advanced electronics and medical devices. The biggest drops? Resource-dependent economies like Russia🇷🇺 and Venezuela 🇻🇪, along with others like Cuba🇨🇺 and Rwanda🇷🇼—proving that commodity wealth doesn't build productive sophistication. (2/3)

Our new Economic Complexity rankings reveal a dramatic shift in global economic power. Asia claims four of the top five positions. Japan🇯🇵 and Switzerland🇨🇭 hold the top spots, followed by Taiwan🇹🇼, South Korea🇰🇷, and Singapore 🇸🇬. But the biggest story? China 🇨🇳 breaks into the top ten, jumping three positions in just five years to establish itself among the world's most sophisticated producers. Watch @ricardo_hausman on the new ECI rankings and growth projections in this short video. (1/3)

TODAY (2/12): Join us for a Development Talk "From Vacant Houses to Growth-Ready Capabilities: A Place-Based Growth Diagnostic" with Terrance Smith, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Baltimore. ⏰ Thursday, February 12, Noon - 1pm EST 📍 Online / Malkin Penthouse, Harvard Kennedy School ✔️ Register: lnkd.in/etAWrxQ2

Links: Scientific Data research paper: nature.com/articles/s4159… Methodology visual explainer: atlas.hks.harvard.edu/trade-data-met… Atlas of Economic Complexity:

📚Want to dig deeper into the methodology? Our interactive visual explainer (link below) walks you through every step, with direct links to the Comtrade Downloader, Conversion Weights Generator, and the complete bilateral trade dataset. (7/7)

📢In addition to the new growth projections and complexity rankings... We're excited to unveil our new international trade data cleaning methodology. This is an important evolution on one of global economics' toughest problems: trade data powers policy and investment decisions worldwide, but the numbers rarely add up. @ricardo_hausman provides this quick summary, but we'll cover it in more detail in this thread. (1/7)