The term "middle income trap" has been widely used in the literature, without having been clearly dened or formally tested. We propose a statistical denition of a middle income trap and derive a simple time-series test. We nd that the concept survives a rigorous scrutiny of the data, with the...

China’s growth has been rapid but the value of China's international trade has grown even faster. This trade-biased growth is bringing both challenges and opportunities for Asian economies that are highly integrated with Chinese trade networks. Moreover in ASEAN countries such as Indonesia and...

India’s investment rate has increased fourfold since 1950 and is now nearly 40% of GDP. Many studies have suggested that this rising investment rate is the most significant component of India’s growth acceleration. I assess these hypotheses using the neoclassical growth model decomposition...

Much of the debate about the impact of China on the international political economy arises from the many dimensions of the potential impact and the lack of historical precedent for such a large change. This paper provides some context for thinking about these issues by contrasting China’s...

As a result of the strong desire for sons in India, millions of female foetuses have been aborted over the last three decades alongside an abnormally high mortality rate of infant girls. Given the extent of the problem, a large amount of literature exists on the overall root causes of son...

In India, the mother-in-law is all powerful. At least they are often portrayed as such in Indian popular culture. Similarly, in the socio-economic literature, the influence of the Indian mother-in-law is often taken for granted. However, most of the empirical evidence relies on qualitative data...

This paper investigates the investment-led growth hypothesis for the newly industrialized economies of East Asia. Using numerical simulations and a neoclassical model, it is shown that the revolution in investment rates only explains about 30 per cent of the growth of GDP per worker. In...

An important stylized fact of economic growth is that the rate of return to capital is relatively constant across countries and over time. This paper provides an explanation using a model of growth for a developing economy that has a dualistic structure. Three conditions are derived, each of...

Recent growth theory has focused on the role of human capital as a source of welfare gains in developing economies, rather than traditional sources such as improving resource allocation and physical capital accumulation. This paper examines traditional developing-country labor market problems in...