Today's @bopinion post is about how poor countries started catching up to rich ones.
It looks like decolonization just took a few decades to start working.https://bloom.bg/2yKQWGQ
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But then, starting in the 80s (for China) and the 90s (for India and Indonesia), some of the biggest poor countries got their acts together and started to catch up!pic.twitter.com/3keorSFcE6
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Beginning in the 1990s, poor countries started to grow faster than rich ones. The pattern intensified in the 2000s.https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-future-of-economic-convergence/ …
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Outside of Africa, which was rocked by many huge wars in the 90s, the pattern was even stronger. Poor countries were catching up.https://twitter.com/HannesMalmberg1/status/1052002749762691073 …
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In the 90s, natural resource prices were low, so many resource exporters didn't get to join in the growth party. In the 00s that changed, as resource prices started rising.pic.twitter.com/soqwTTkv3X
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Then the Great Recession halted rich-country growth, but didn't halt poor-country growth.pic.twitter.com/OeSIlDNIVO
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Now, some economists are starting to entertain a wild, hopeful notion: What if the facts are finally catching up to basic economic theory??https://www.cgdev.org/blog/everything-you-know-about-cross-country-convergence-now-wrong …
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Now that growth theory finally (sort of) works, the world will be a changed place. Inequalities won't vanish for a long time. But no longer will a few rich countries get to lord it over the rest of the world. The days of colonialism are done for good. (end)pic.twitter.com/SsSmy0QagA
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"The legacy of colonialism turned out to be a bigger drag on growth than economists had assumed." - not meaning to be snarky, but if (Western) economists assumed that, that's much, much, much too blithe
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I mean, it's not in the Solow model except for "A".
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Yeah, even as a high school student studying economics in Singapore back in the 1990s, it was pretty apparent that "A" contains multitudes, and it was weird to have one of the most major components of growth was just hand-waved away because it was more qualitative
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Hey Noah, question: Are there any poor countries that bucked this general trend, growing fairly quickly after decolonization?
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In addition to SK and Taiwan, I think interesting cases are Singapore and Hong Kong which developed very rapidly. The colonial regimes there weren't focused on resource extraction and their economies initially took off on manufacturing and as ports. Macau might also fit this.
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Interesting that they’re both city-states too

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I've often wondered about the seemingly outsized economic performance of city and micro states and what that might imply for development and governance.
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Cities are smaller and more integrated than the average state, so I suppose that would result in greater productivity and economic efficiency? Idk, but we should look into this topic and regroup!
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Sabotage and network effects also played a role
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1990s called, they want their reductionist "science" back!
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Ireland became independent in 1922, had a civil war, followed autarkic economic policies and didn't have free secondary (high school) education. It remained poor until decisions to open economy and invest in education from late 1950s onwards. Despite mistakes, it's now very rich.
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Political diarrhea as well I guess!
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