European countries’ typology by the intensity of transboundary cooperation and its impact on the economic complexity level

Abstract

Over recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that the countries, regions and individual systems are now developing within the framework of the emerging technological paradigm. The key elements for their development are knowledge and capabilities, being transformed into the products exported by a given country, these constitute the core of the economic complexity theory. In this article, the authors attempt to assess the long-term correlations between economic complexity and transboundary intensity drawing on the example of European countries. The authors developed a European Countries’ Typology according to their transboundary cooperation intensity. The paper establishes that the influence of the transboundary factor weakens as the economic complexity increases, and under certain conditions, it has a negative impact. It substantiates that the revealed relationships are due to the increasing role of global processes rather than transboundary ones as the economy becomes more complex and oriented towards the global market.