sustainability Article Economic Complexity and Human Development: Moderated by Logistics and International Migration Emilie Sophie Le Caous 1, * and Fenghueih Huarng 2   Citation: Le Caous, E.S.; Huarng, F. Economic Complexity and Human Development: Moderated by Logistics and International Migration. Sustainability 2021, 13, 1867. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su13041867 Academic Editors: César A. Hidalgo, María Semitiel-García, Philipp Aerni and Markus Schaefer Received: 31 October 2020 Accepted: 1 February 2021 Published: 9 February 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 College of Business, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology (STUST), No.1, Nantai Street, Yongkang District, Tainan 71005, Taiwan 2 Department of Business Administration, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No.1, Nantai Street, Yongkang District, Tainan 71005, Taiwan; fhhuarng@stust.edu.tw * Correspondence: emilielc@stust.edu.tw; Tel.: +886-983691768 Abstract: Living in a world where we can expand our economic wealth and the richness of human life is the core of the human development concept. Greater well-being for all can be achieved by improving people’s capabilities and more importantly, by giving individuals the ability to use their knowledge and skills. The economic complexity index (i.e., ECI) is a new indicator that defines a country’s complexity. Through a vast network, citizens can transfer an enormous quantity of relevant knowledge, leading to the creation of diversified and complex products. However, the relationship between economic complexity and human development is not that simple. Thus, this paper aimed to understand it deeper—international migration and logistics performance are used as moderators. Hierarchical linear modeling was the statistical tool used to analyze two groups of countries from 1990 to 2017. For robustness and to deal with possible endogeneity issues, different year lags were also included. The results show that international migration and logistics performance are decisive moderators as they change the relationship between economic complexity and human development. Keywords: economic complexity; human development; logistics performance; international migra- tion; gender inequality; social development; hierarchical linear modeling; HLM 1. Introduction Development is one of the most complex but fundamental terms in our lives. For a long time, GDP per capita was considered the primary indicator of countries’ wealth. Nowadays, the focus includes the economic point of view, but not only. Countries worldwide should provide an environment where their citizens can expand their knowledge and skills to access more opportunities, expand their choices, and satisfy their basic human needs to reach a higher level of well-being. Better living conditions in terms of education, health and income, are affected by many factors, such as governance, social development, and inequalities [1–4]. A country should provide a political environment where individuals feel safe and free to share their views, where citizens believe in their government and can become civic participants, where young generations have great opportunities for jobs, where gender gaps are reduced, and where the minorities are included. We believe that economic complexity could help to understand the level of human development. By diversifying their productive structure and becoming economically com- plex, countries can reach high economic growth levels [5,6]. To measure the productive structure, we used the economic complexity index (i.e., ECI). The ECI is “the indicator of the composition of a country’s productive outputs and the structures that emerge to hold and combine knowledge” [6]. The economic complexity index can quantify the knowledge and capabilities available in a country. By exchanging the knowledge acquired through education and work experiences, individuals create a vast network, where the collective knowledge is transferred and improved, allowing the creation of diversified and com- plex products. As a country innovates and becomes economically complex, individuals Sustainability 2021, 13, 1867. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041867 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability