Revisiting Growth and Convergence : Is Africa Catching Up?

Revisiting Growth and Convergence : Is Africa Catching Up?

This article summarizes the publication "Revisiting Gowth and Convergence: Is Africa Catching Up?" The neoclassical Solow framework has been the workhorse for empirical analysis of growth in industrial and developing countries. In this fr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Tsangarides, Charalambos G.
Format:	Brief
Language:	English
Published:	2012
Subjects:	BUDGET DEFICITS CAPITA INCOME CAPITA INCOME GROWTH CAPITAL ACCUMULATION CONSTANT RATE COUNTRY SPECIFIC COUNTRY-SPECIFIC EFFECTS CROSS-COUNTRY INCOME ECONOMIC ANALYSIS ECONOMIC FACTORS ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC POLICIES EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE EMPIRICAL WORK ENDOGENOUS GROWTH EXOGENOUS RATE FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT GROWTH MODELS GROWTH RATES GROWTH THEORIES GROWTH THEORY HUMAN CAPITAL INCOME GROWTH INCOMES INFLATION RATE LONG RUN LONG-RUN GROWTH LOW INFLATION NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH NEOCLASSICAL MODEL PER CAPITA GROWTH POLARIZED SOCIETIES POLITICAL RIGHTS POPULATION GROWTH POPULATION GROWTH RATES POSITIVE EXTERNALITIES PUBLIC GOODS REAL INTEREST RATES SAVINGS SOCIAL POLICIES SOCIAL POLICY TECHNICAL CHANGE TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS TRADE OPENNESS GROWTH MODELS GROWTH POLICY CONVERGENCE HYPOTHESIS PER CAPITA INCOME COMPARATIVE ECONOMICS VARIABLE RATES CROSS-COUNTRY EXPERIENCE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES SAVINGS BEHAVIOR POPULATION ECONOMICS POLICY DEVELOPMENT LIBERALIZING ECONOMIES
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/05/1643381/revisiting-growth-convergence-africa-catching-up http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9813

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Summary:	This article summarizes the publication "Revisiting Gowth and Convergence: Is Africa Catching Up?" The neoclassical Solow framework has been the workhorse for empirical analysis of growth in industrial and developing countries. In this framework, steady state economic growth depends on exogenous technological progress and population growth. In particular, without technological progress, output per capita does not grow. An important feature of the neoclassical model that has been the central focus of empirical work is the convergence property: output levels of countries with similar technologies converge to a given level in the steady state. In the end, ceteris paribus, the lagging poor countries will tend to catch up with the rich. Using cross-sectional analysis the majority of the literature seems to have reached a consensus on the issue of convergence: the poor do catch up with the rich, at a rate of 2-3 percent per year. The obvious shortcoming of the neoclassical model is that long-run per capita growth is determined by the exogenous rate of technological progress. Work on endogenous growth theory has introduced alternative models that explain long-run growth, and provide a theory of technological progress: growth is generated by factors other than exogenous technical change.