Insufficient Economic Convergence in the World Economy: How Do Economists Explain Why Too Many Countries Do Not Catch-up?

Hansjörg Herr and Bea Ruoff

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: This essay reviews different economic perspectives on the development of productivity and living standards in developing countries. It shows that neoclassical approaches to the problem of economic convergence fail to provide a satisfactory explanation of why economic convergence does not take place. In doing so, it reviews seven heterodox arguments on why developing countries do not converge. The article argues that the lack of economic convergence is a result of market forces which lead to the reproduction of underdevelopment. Therefore, comprehensive state interventions are needed to overcome underdevelopment. The article discusses different alternative policies which are needed to trigger development, thus countering the perspectives of neoliberal economists and the Washington Consensus.

Keywords: Macroeconomics; underdevelopment; economic convergence; Keynesian paradigm; Washington Consensus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277976018758078 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:agspub:v:7:y:2018:i:1:p:1-27

DOI: 10.1177/2277976018758078

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy from Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().