Comparison of the country ranking between our metrics and the MR.

<p>In panel <i>a</i> we compare the two rankings while in panel <i>b</i> and <i>c</i> we respectively show the time evolution of the <i>K_c</i> and the fitness. China, India, Romania, Cyprus and Qatar are highlighted for their anomalous behavior in the MR framework and are paradigmatic with respect to the conceptual weakness of this method. In the MR, poorly diversified systems (for instance Qatar and all the oil exporters) are characterized by relatively high level of competitiveness. On other hand countries with very large diversification (China and India) are penalized and medium sized countries tend to be favored by the MR algorithm (Cyprus and Romania). This is due to the fact that the competitiveness of a country in the MR method are averages and therefore rankings are set by the average complexity of the exported products, independently on the level of diversification. Conversely, in our framework, the fitness of a country is an extensive variable with respect to the number of exported product so that the average complexity of the products and the diversification of a country are both taken into account.