Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/178653 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 103/2018
Publisher: 
Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE), Berlin
Abstract: 
After World War II only a few developing countries were able to catch up to real GDP per capita levels prevailing in developed countries. These successful countries in almost all cases came from Asia and did not follow the free market doctrine in the tradition of the Washington Consensus. There must be theoretical explanations as to why underdevelopment is reproduced and most countries in the world do not catch up. This essay reviews different economic approaches which attempt to explain the lack of convergence. A first group of approaches focuses on the lack of sufficient productivity development (free trade, global value chains, negative terms of trade effects, abundance of scarce resources, premature deindustrialization); the second group focuses on problems to trigger sufficient growth (distorted financial systems, high restrictions on macroeconomic demand management). Countries can suffer from several of these factors, which can explain why development is only possible with the support of comprehensive government policies.
Subjects: 
underdevelopment
financial system
free trade
inequality
Keynesian paradigm
Washington Consensus
JEL: 
B50
F40
O11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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