Fig 1. The binary matrix of countries and products built from the worldwide export flows of BACI data-set for 1998, with Ncountries = 147 and Nproducts = 1131 [9].
Products are categorized according to the Harmonized System 2007 at 4-digit coarse-graining and the adopted digitization criterion is Balassa’s Revealed Comparative Advantage. By sorting the columns of the matrix by increasing Fitness and the rows by increasing Complexity, the matrix acquires a triangular-like shape. As it turns out, countries with more diversified export baskets are more competitive, while countries specialized in a few products—which generally are also exported by every other country—are the less competitive.