Read more about the article The Middle-Income Trap and Resource-Based Growth: The Case of Brazil

The Middle-Income Trap and Resource-Based Growth: The Case of Brazil

This paper examines Brazil's economic growth patterns over the last three decades and identifies a missed opportunity for the country to attain high-income status by the mid-2010s. Instead, Brazil has suffered from low productivity growth, and has made little progress in transforming its production and export structures in favor of higher value-added activities. This premature de-industrialization makes it challenging for Brazil to transition from its long-standing upper-middle-income status. Brazil now has a limited, two-decade window to catch up with high-income nations before losing its demographic dividend, potentially leaving the country with an aging population without achieving high-income status. Therefore, it is crucial for Brazil to raise productivity growth through competition policies, and by embracing technological change. Achieving this goal requires comprehensive trade reforms to improve domestic competition, and to harness technology advancements effectively. This paper discusses key elements of such a policy framework within the broader context of a development strategy aimed at breaking free from the middle-income trap.

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Read more about the article The Middle-Income Trap

The Middle-Income Trap

The “middle-income trap” has become a broad designation trying to capture the many cases of developing countries that succeeded in evolving from low- to middle-levels of per capita income, but then appeared to stall, losing momentum along the route toward the higher income levels of advanced economies. We need to approach middle-income countries as being in a complex transition phase between accumulation and innovation-based economies. Individual middle-income country experiences of falling into a “trap” may be approached as cases of lack of or failing performance in footing the bill in terms of appropriate policies and institutions.

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Read more about the article Middle-income countries should not be rushed to graduate

Middle-income countries should not be rushed to graduate

Many donor countries seem eager to see middle-income countries “master out” and graduate to a non-client status in multilateral development institutions before fully achieving their development potential. We argue that such institutions can still significantly contribute to the sustainable development of Middle Income Countries, while also seizing many benefits from this relationship

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Read more about the article Brazil, South Korea: Two Tales of Climbing an Income Ladder

Brazil, South Korea: Two Tales of Climbing an Income Ladder

The “middle income trap” may well characterize the experience of Brazil and most of Latin America since the 1980s. Conversely, South Korea maintained its pace of evolution, reaching a high-income status. Such divergence of economic growth can be related to their distinctive performances of domestic accumulation of technological and organizational capabilities. Their different approaches to global value chains and trade globalization reinforced such discrepancy in domestic accumulation processes.

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Read more about the article Middle Income Countries and Multilateral Development Banks: Traps on the Way to Graduation

Middle Income Countries and Multilateral Development Banks: Traps on the Way to Graduation

Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have two financing windows, with different terms, dedicated to low- and middle-income countries. Countries are presumed to cross those windows as their income per capita rises, with middle-income countries (MICs) eventually “graduating” to a non-client status once they reach some criteria. However, due to what may be called “middle-income traps”, such progression toward graduation has been limited to a small number of countries. In this paper, we suggest areas where the support by MDBs would yield highest results toward “graduation” of MICs. Item 1 reviews the criteria that have been used to justify graduation, whereas item 2 approaches two ways by which the possibility of “middle-income traps” impeding such graduation has been discussed in the literature. Finally, item 3 proposes an interface between MDBs’ support to MICs and the policy agenda to overcome middle-income traps.

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Read more about the article Traps on the Road to High Income

Traps on the Road to High Income

This note outlines two different ways in which the concept has been approached since its first use 12 years ago by Gill and Kharas (2007). One has been empirical, where search is made to identify – or deny - breaks or turning points in time-series data exhibiting “growth traps” for middle-income economies. The other one, closer to the way it was originally suggested, refers to the need of policy and institutional change for a country to keep climbing the income ladder after a transition from low levels. Traps are seen as shortcomings resulting from the absence of any of those policy and institutional changes considered key to gearing up the transition from middle- to upper-income levels.

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Read more about the article Overlapping Globalizations

Overlapping Globalizations

Current technological developments in manufacturing are likely to lead to a partial reversal of the wave of fragmentation and global value chains that was at the core of the rise of North-South trade from 1990 onward. At the same time, China – the main hub of the global-growth-cum-structural-change of that period – may attempt to extend the previous wave through its One Belt, One Road initiative.

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Read more about the article Access to finance, product innovation and middle-income traps

Access to finance, product innovation and middle-income traps

Interactions between access to finance, product innovation, and labor supply are studied in a two-period overlapping generations model with an endogenous skill distribution and financial market imperfections. In the model lack of access to finance (induced by high monitoring costs) has an adverse effect on innovation activity not only directly but also indirectly, because too few individuals may choose to invest in skills. If monitoring costs fall with the number of successful projects, multiple steady states may emerge, one of which defined as a middle-income trap, characterized by low wages in the design sector, a low share of the labor force engaged in innovation activity, and low growth. A sufficiently ambitious policy aimed at alleviating constraints on access to finance by innovators may allow a country to move away from such a trap by promoting the production of ideas and improving incentives to invest in skills.

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Read more about the article Middle Income Growth Traps

Middle Income Growth Traps

This paper studies the existence of middle-income growth traps in a two-period overlapping generations model of economic growth with two types of labor and endogenous occupational choices. It also distinguishes between “basic” and “advanced” infrastructure, with the latter promoting design activities, and accounts for a knowledge network externality associated with product diversification. Multiple steady-state equilibria may emerge, one of them taking the form of a low-growth trap characterized by low productivity growth and a misallocation of talent—defined as a relatively low share of high-ability workers in design activities. Improved access to advanced infrastructure may help to escape from that trap. The implications of other public policies, including the protection of property rights and labor market reforms, are also discussed.

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Read more about the article Access to Finance, Product Innovation, and Middle-Income Growth Traps

Access to Finance, Product Innovation, and Middle-Income Growth Traps

After experiencing an initial period of rapid growth, many developing countries have fallen into the middle-income “trap”—stuck between low-wage, low-technology markets and high-income, innovation-based developed economies. This note argues that inadequate access to finance has an adverse effect on innovation, directly, through the financing of fewer research and development (R&D) projects, and also indirectly, as fewer individuals may choose to invest in the skills necessary to work in R&D fields.

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Read more about the article Lost in Transition

Lost in Transition

Not long ago, many economists were anticipating a switchover in the global economy's main engines, with autonomous sources of growth in developing economies compensating for the drag of struggling advanced economies. But, in the last few months, enthusiasm about these economies’ prospects has given way to bleak forecasts.

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