Immiserizing growth is a long-term phenomenon that occurs when the gain in a country’s social welfare arising from economic growth is more than offset by the loss in such welfare associated with an adverse shift in the terms of trade. In one case explored many years ago by Jagdish Bhagwati, immiserizing growth occurs in a developing nation that has started economic growth but faces unfavorable international demand conditions as it increases its traditional exports. In another case explored recently by Paul A. Samuelson, immiserizing growth occurs for the growing industrialized country when its trade partner follows a policy of import substituting growth and, as a result, shifts the terms of trade against the exporting country. Still others have specified a variety of different cases of immiserizing growth. The author provides a simple graphical method to analyze these situations and then presents data showing that immiserizing growth is a relatively rare phenomenon.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Andrew Ivers) The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Andrew Ivers to update the entry or send us the correct address..
Find related papers by JEL classification: F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade O19 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: