Export upstreamness and financial development

As international data reveal evidence on distancing (upstreaming) of products' conception from their end use, Antr & agrave;s et al. (2012) examined bivariate correlations between export upstreamness and country characteristics. In particular, they reported an "especially robust" negative correlation between a country's export upstreamness and financial development. We revisit the robustness of this inference and observe that such an association is highly sensitive.