IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lev/wrkpap/wp_644.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Rich Countries Became Rich and Why Poor Countries Remain Poor: It's the Economic Structure . . . Duh!

Author

Listed:
  • Jesus Felipe
  • Utsav Kumar
  • Arnelyn Abdon

Abstract

Becoming a rich country requires the ability to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 exported commodities according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the income content of the products exported); and (2) connectivity to other products (a well-connected export basket is one that allows an easy jump to other potential exports). We identify 352 "good" products and 427 "bad" products. Based on this, we categorize 154 countries into four groups according to these two characteristics. There are 34 countries whose export basket contains a significant share of good products. We find 28 countries in a "middle product" trap. These are countries whose export baskets contain a significant share of products that are in the middle of the sophistication and connectivity spectra. We also find 17 countries that are in a "middle-low" product trap, and 75 countries that are in a difficult and precarious "low product" trap. These are countries whose export baskets contain a significant share of unsophisticated products that are poorly connected to other products. To escape this situation, these countries need to implement policies that would help them accumulate the capabilities needed to manufacture and export more sophisticated and better connected products.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesus Felipe & Utsav Kumar & Arnelyn Abdon, 2010. "How Rich Countries Became Rich and Why Poor Countries Remain Poor: It's the Economic Structure . . . Duh!," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_644, Levy Economics Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_644
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_644.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arnelyn Abdon & Jesus Felipe, 2011. "The Product Space: What Does It Say About the Opportunities for Growth and Structural Transformation of Sub-Saharan Africa?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_670, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Myriam Ben Saâd & Giscard Assoumou Ella, 2019. "Economic Complexity and Gender Inequality in Education: An Empirical Study," Post-Print hal-03426719, HAL.
    3. Myriam Ben Saâd & Giscard Assoumou-Ella, 2019. "Economic Complexity and Gender Inequality in Education: An Empirical Study," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(1), pages 321-334.
    4. repec:gdk:wpaper:49 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Jesus Felipe & Arnelyn Abdon & Utsav Kumar, 2012. "Tracking the Middle-income Trap: What Is It, Who Is in It, and Why?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_715, Levy Economics Institute.
    6. Fernando Silva Lima & Mariano Yoshitake, 2018. "The Evidence of the Fiscal Incentive to Increase the HDI: The Case of Maranhao," International Journal of Business Administration, International Journal of Business Administration, Sciedu Press, vol. 9(4), pages 214-223, July.
    7. Upalat Korwatanasakul, 2023. "Thailand and the Middle-Income Trap: An Analysis from the Global Value Chain Perspective," PIER Discussion Papers 202, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Renat Butabaev, 2015. "There is no growth without change - policy implications for transition economies," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 11(1), pages 69-84.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bad Product; Capabilities; Low Product Trap; Middle Product Trap; Proximity; Sophistication; Structural Transformation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O25 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Industrial Policy
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_644. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elizabeth Dunn (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.levyinstitute.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.