Trapped in the Middle?: Developmental Challenges for Middle-Income Countries
José Antonio Alonso and José Antonio Ocampo
Abstract
There is growing evidence that overcoming the low-income threshold and reaching middle-income status is not sufficient for countries to converge toward high-income levels. Few middle-income countries have successfully completed that transit in recent decades, with the majority remaining in the middle-income group, and so facing what has come to be called"the middle-income trap". It is therefore essential to explore whether middle-income traps really exist and, if they do, how these pitfalls are manifested, what their causes are, what economic policy measures are required to escape from them, a ... More
There is growing evidence that overcoming the low-income threshold and reaching middle-income status is not sufficient for countries to converge toward high-income levels. Few middle-income countries have successfully completed that transit in recent decades, with the majority remaining in the middle-income group, and so facing what has come to be called"the middle-income trap". It is therefore essential to explore whether middle-income traps really exist and, if they do, how these pitfalls are manifested, what their causes are, what economic policy measures are required to escape from them, and what international cooperation can do to support this process. Trapped in the Middle? brings together diverse perspectives on these important questions, providing new evidence and analytical approaches to enrich the debate on the domestic and international challenges faced by a significant number of middle-income countries, in which over three-quarters of the global population live.
Keywords:
middle-income country,
middle-income trap,
economic growth,
economic convergence,
technological innovation,
institutional change,
financial flows,
development cooperation,
international trade,
global economic governance
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198852773 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2020 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198852773.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
José Antonio Alonso, editor
Professor of Applied Economics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
José Antonio Ocampo, editor
Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
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