Economic impact of export sophistication in Latin-american countries

Abstract

Considering the economic conditions of Latin America and the Caribbean region, a study in the region could give clues about the current situation and opportunities for export development, the current dependency on natural resource export basket point outs that there is low competitiveness in the current export basket, and an improvement in export performance could lead the region reduce the gap that has with other regions. This study can help understand better whether increasing the export performance in LAC region can have a significant impact that can be reflected in its economic growth. Current periods statistics in the region shows that the export development corresponds more to a previous decade rather than the last years. The descriptive analysis of EXPY and PRODY indexes shows that currently LAC is not exploiting its market opportunities, and these statistics together with empirical results show that the impact of export performance in economic growth is positive and changing the export basket to more sophisticated products would boost the economic growth in the region.