Many of the crucial debates in development economics are encapsulated in the question of economic convergence. Is there a tendency for the poorer countries to grow more rapidly than the richer countries, and thereby to converge in living standards? Or instead, are there tendencies for the "rich...

This paper describes ways that the CEEs can speed their convergence with the EU by emulating the growth strategies of the very fast growing economies. In Section II, we introduce the VFGEs, and discuss some of the sources of their superior growth performance. In Section III, we demonstrate the...

During the past five years, there has been an important international debate over the style of market reforms in the former centrally planned economies of East Asia, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. The economic performance across regions, summarized in Table 1, could not be more...