Is International Openness associated with faster economic growth?

This paper considers the role of international openness in facilitating the convergence of average income per capita between countries. The statistical technique of Discriminant Analysis is used to sort economies into groups of open and closed on the basis of a number of measures of the stance of international trade policy. The evolution of the cross-section distribution of average income per capita across countries is modelled both for the whole world, and then for the groups of open and closed economies separately. Open economies are found to exhibit substantially different income dynamics and to converge to higher levels of income compared to their closed counterparts. These differences remain even after making allowance for differences in countries' relative levels of investment.