Loreto’s Hidden Wealth: Economic Complexity Analysis and Productive Diversification Opportunities

Abstract

This report has three main objectives. Firstly, to identify and assess the agglomeration of know-how that is currently present in Loreto’s existing economic activities. Secondly, to define technological proximity metrics based on available data in order to identify the economic activities that generate the most value-added and which require similar productive capacities to those that are already present in the region. Finally, this paper seeks to identify those economic activities that are relatively “adjacent” to Loreto’s stock of productive know-how and which, therefore, have high potential to lead the productive transformation of its economy.

The Growth Lab at Harvard University, with funding provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, has undertaken this investigation with the aim of identifying the existing productive capacities in Loreto, as well as the economic activities with potential to drive the structural transformation of its economy. This paper is part of a broader investigation – Promoting Sustainable Economic Growth and Structural Transformation in the Amazon Region of Loreto, Peru – which seeks to contribute with context-specific inputs for the development of national and sub-national public policies that promote productive development and prosperity in this Peruvian state.

CID Faculty Working Paper

386

Language

English