Traditional economics, specifically convergence theory, tells us that poor nations should grow faster than rich nations.
I’m more interested, however, in why convergence often doesn’t happen, or only partially happens.
And I’m extremely interested in why we often see divergence, which occurs when two countries are at a similar level of development, but then one grows much faster than the other.
Let’s consider the example of Brazil vs, South Korea. Otaviano Canuto has an interesting article, published by the Center for Macroeconomics and Development, that looks at how the two countries have diverged over the past 50 years.
Here’s the chart that depicts the dramatic difference.
The author analyzes many of the reasons that South Korea has enjoyed faster growth.
It’s especially worth noting that Brazil’s protectionism has been self-defeating.
The “middle-income trap” has captured many developing countries: they succeeded in evolving from low per capita income levels, but then appeared to stall, losing momentum along the route toward the higher income levels… Such a 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…
The path from low- to middle- and then to high-income per capita corresponds to increasing the shares of population moved from subsistence activities to simple modern tasks and then to sophisticated ones. …South Korea relied extensively on international trade to accelerate their labor transfer by inserting themselves into the labor-intensive segments of global value chains… with the “helping winners and saving losers” of Brazil’s industrial policies…, the temptation to use surpluses to accumulate wealth in ways to maximize frontiers of interaction with the public sector prevails… Brazil’s long-standing high levels of trade protection and closure also favored such an option… The Brazilian economy pays a price in terms of productivity foregone because of its lack of trade openness.
As a big fan of trade, I obviously agree with this analysis.
But I also think that’s not the full story.
If you compare the scores the two countries get from the most-recent edition of Economic Freedom of the World, you’ll find that South Korea scores better on trade.
But you’ll also notice that there are much bigger gaps when looking at scores for size of government, legal system and property rights, and regulation (and the gaps for the latter two indices have existed for decades).
The bottom line is that there are many policy reasons why Brazil lags behind South Korea.
So if Brazil wants to break out of the “middle-income trap,” it needs to follow the tried-and-true recipe for growth and prosperity (what used to be known as the “Washington Consensus“).
P.S. And that means ignoring poisonous advice from the International Monetary Fund and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
