Clubs de convergence et équilibres multiples : comment les économies émergentes ont-elles réussi à échapper au piège du sous-développement ?

This paper explores the policy relevance of the underdevelopment trap hypothesis, which postulates that poor countries are locked in a low equilibrium and that big push policies, involving large amounts of external assistance, would be necessary to lift them out of poverty. It shows that transfers, if not accompanied by structural change, cannot trigger such successful take-off. The paper then provides a test to identify countries that may have jumped out of their underdevelopment trap. The test is based on the observation of multiple growth acceleration patterns that should be observed in case of successful take-off. The paper identifies a dozen of such countries in a set of a hundred of developing countries for which growth time-series are available from 1950. Comparing these emerging countries with non-emerging countries, it shows that initial education policies have played a critical role in take-off. External assistance has not played a significant role.