What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?
Have developing countries made progress on closing income gap between their per capita incomes and those in the advanced economies?
Abstract
We examine the record of cross-country growth over the past 50 years and ask if developing countries have made progress on closing income gap between their per capita incomes and those in the advanced economies. We conclude that, as a group, they have not and then survey the literature on absolute convergence with particular emphasis on that from the last decade or so. That literature supports our conclusion of a lack of progress in closing the income gap between countries. We close with a brief examination of the recent literature on cross-individual distribution of income which finds that, despite the lack of progress on cross country convergence, global inequality has tended to fall since 2000.
This work is part of the ‘Macroeconomics in Low-income countries’ programme
Citation
Johnson, Paul, and Chris Papageorgiou. 2020. What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence? Journal of Economic Literature, 58 (1): 129-75.DOI: 10.1257/jel.20181207