  Economic complexity reflects the amount of knowledge that is embedded in the
productive structure of an economy. It resides on the premise of hidden
capabilities - fundamental endowments underlying the productive structure. In
general, measuring the capabilities behind economic complexity directly is
difficult, and indirect measures have been suggested which exploit the fact
that the presence of the capabilities is expressed in a country's mix of
products. We complement these studies by introducing a probabilistic framework
which leverages Bayesian non-parametric techniques to extract the dominant
features behind the comparative advantage in exported products. Based on
economic evidence and trade data, we place a restricted Indian Buffet Process
on the distribution of countries' capability endowment, appealing to a culinary
metaphor to model the process of capability acquisition. The approach comes
with a unique level of interpretability, as it produces a concise and
economically plausible description of the instantiated capabilities.
