What Explains the Growth of Developing Countries?

Abstract

Abstract The growing literature on income and productivity convergence among countries seems to suggest that the developing countries have benefited to a relatively small degree from being backward (see, e.g., Baumol 1986, Baumol, Blackman, and Wolff 1989, and Zind 1991). Over the last 40 years, only a few developing countries have joined the “convergence club.” The majority have gained on the highest-income countries, the United States and Canada, but have lost ground relative to the industrialized countries as a group.