Meanwhile, the coming of rapid convergence by emerging markets is a huge success story. At that point it was mostly non-development economics, the study of why Third World countries seemed to fall ever further behind the West. And because the frontier keeps moving out, countries that get It keep growing faster. The It theory also, I’d argue, explains the U-shaped relationship Subramanian et al find between GDP per capita and growth, in which middle-income countries grow faster than either poor or rich countries. Countries that are still very poor are countries that haven’t got It; countries that are already rich are already at the technological frontier, limiting the space for rapid growth.

Source: New York Times October 20, 2018 10:53 UTC