  In economic literature, economic complexity is typically approximated on the
basis of an economy's gross export structure. However, in times of ever
increasingly integrated global value chains, gross exports may convey an
inaccurate image of a country's economic performance since they also
incorporate foreign value-added and double-counted exports. Thus, I introduce a
new empirical approach approximating economic complexity based on a country's
value-added export structure. This approach leads to substantially different
complexity rankings compared to established metrics. Moreover, the explanatory
power of GDP per capita growth rates for a sample of 40 lower-middle- to
high-income countries is considerably higher, even if controlling for typical
growth regression covariates.
