In this episode of Econ Thought, Filippo Gaddo speaks with César Hidalgo, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics and Director of the Center for Collective Learning at TSE and Corvinus University of Budapest, about his latest book The Infinite Alphabet: The Laws of Knowledge. See his bio and website here.

Cesar traces his intellectual path from network science and the Atlas of Economic Complexity to a broader theory of how knowledge grows, diffuses, and sometimes decays. He distinguishes between “knowledge about things,” which Hayek’s price system helps to coordinate, and “knowledge of how to do things,” which is highly specific, non-fungible, and often embedded in networks of people. Through stories - from a Florida lawyer’s niche expertise to the industrial clusters of Germany and Chinese innovation hubs - he illustrates how knowledge builds cumulatively and why it resists easy transfer across places or professions.

The conversation explores how nations can nurture and preserve this type of knowledge. Cesar contrasts Ecuador’s failed attempt to build a remote “city of knowledge” with China’s success in fostering dense urban ecosystems such as Zhongguancun, where public-private “guiding funds” catalysed entrepreneurship. He warns that countries can lose hard-won know-how - citing nuclear construction and shipbuilding as examples - unless they continuously “practice” capabilities.

As the conversation between Filippo and Cesar turns to AI, he sees it as a powerful complement to human learning, but not a substitute for collective experience. Looking ahead, Cesar expects the next wave of growth to emerge from South and Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, driven by local knowledge accumulation. He closes by noting that institutional flexibility - especially in labour markets - remains an under-discussed yet essential ingredient for societies to adapt, learn, and flourish.

César A. Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar known for his contributions to economic complexity and for his applied work on data visualization and artificial intelligence.

Hidalgo is a tenured professor at the Toulouse School of Economics’ (TSE) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the head of the Center for Collective Learning a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at Institute for Advanced Study (IAST) at TSE and the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (CIAS) at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Alliance Manchester Business School of the University of Manchester. Between 2010 and 2019 Hidalgo led MIT’s Collective Learning group and prior to that he was a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Hidalgo is also a founder of Datawheel, an award winning company specialized in public data distribution and economic development strategy. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor in Physics from Universidad Católica de Chile.