International Economic Integration from the Perspective of Economic Complexity and Economic Fitness: A Methodological Proposal

International Economic Integration can be described as a process in which a group of countries seeks mutual benefits through mechanisms such as the elimination and/or reduction of trade, social, and political barriers between others. From an economic point of view, the importance of the integration of countries is fundamental for their development simply because most of them are part of some system of international economic integration. In this work, the issue of economic integration will not be discussed in depth but instead will oversee proposing some well-known metrics in the field of economic development that could be very useful as analysis and decision-making tools. in the process of regional economic integration. In this sense, this work proposes using concepts and metrics of Economic Complexity and Economic Fitness to identify combined productive capacities between countries that are part of an economic block, whether real or fictitious. The problem in understanding how economically integrate the countries is to identify the combined productive capacities that would exist if two or more countries that make up an economic block are considered as a single country. Experimental analyzes were carried out for a fictitious case, where a world with 10 countries and 15 products is presented; in addition, 3 economic blocks were defined, which were analyzed applying economic complexity and economic fitness metrics. The results obtained reflect the great importance of economic integration since, by establishing economic blocks, it is possible to capture more productive capacities by improving both the diversity of the economic block and the ubiquity of the products produced in it by addressing the productive capacities of the member countries.