The Middle-Income Trap Turns Ten

Gill, Indermit S. ; Kharas, Homi

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: MIC TRAPS;    GROWTH RATES;    MONETARY POLICY;    CAPITAL MARKETS;    UNEMPLOYMENT RATES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7403
RP-ID  :  WPS7403

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Since we introduced the term“middle-income trap” in 2006, it has become popular amongpolicy makers and researchers. In May 2015, a search ofGoogle Scholar returned more than 3,000 articles includingthe term and about 300 articles with the term in the title.This paper provides a (non-exhaustive) survey of thisliterature. The paper then discusses what, in retrospect, wemissed when we coined the term.Today, based ondevelopments in East Asia, Latin America, and Central Europeduring the past decade, we would have paid more attention todemographic factors, entrepreneurship, and externalinstitutional anchors. We would also make it clearer that tous, the term was as much the absence of a satisfactorytheory that could inform development policy in middle-incomeeconomies as the articulation of a development phenomenon.Three-quarters of the people in the world now live inmiddle-income economies, but economists have yet to providea reliable theory of growth to help policy makers navigatethe transition from middle- to high-income status. Hybridsof the Solow-Swan and Lucas-Romer models are not unhelpful,but they are poor substitutes for a well-constructed growth framework.