Catching Up at Different Speeds

Growth took off in China. The Chinese started catching up very quickly with the United States.

Manufacturing enables rapid catch up because it is relatively easy to copy and implement foreign production technologies, even in poor countries that suffer from multiple disadvantages.

Coherent programs to promote economic catch up are relatively straightforward.

To begin, the national champions of the catch up phase must be rendered accessible to competitive assault.

Some developing countries, especially in Africa, are late starters and their markets are relatively underdeveloped.

Without relatively high savings, a developing country like China may never catch up.

If that happened, other countries Australia, New Zealand, and, most importantly, India might seek to jump on the bandwagon.

But the economics of innovation are very different for those at the frontier versus those who are followers striving to catch up.

First, although some parts of the economy reached advanced industrialization in record time, other parts (and institutions) are struggling to catch up.

It permits self confident political leaders to take charge of their own future. It allows them to shape the narrative that underpins market confidence, rather than play catch up.

This time, TFP growth soared to 5 6 , partly owing to the catching up process facilitated by China s adoption of foreign technology and know how.

Leaders of OECD countries should look at Italy and recognize the dangers emerging from their young people who are being left behind.

Coherent programs to promote economic catch up are relatively straightforward. But the transition from follower to leader at the frontier of the innovation economy is more challenging and elusive.

Some conspiracy minded commentators even suggest that this is related to Europe s lack of competitiveness instead of trying to keep up, they say, Europe has decided to find a way to slow everyone else down.

This opens up some room for governments to maneuver. It permits self confident political leaders to take charge of their own future. It allows them to shape the narrative that underpins market confidence, rather than play catch up.

Yet some other high income countries, such as the United States and Canada, are not keeping up.

HONG KONG For 250 years, technological innovation has driven economic development. But the economics of innovation are very different for those at the frontier versus those who are followers striving to catch up.

But their ability to grow is being impaired because they lack the resources to confront the massive business lobbies of the EU s most developed and richest countries.

Political institutions needed to catch up.

Leaders of OECD countries should look at Italy and recognize the dangers emerging from their young people who are being left behind. In Italy itself, it is high time that older generations start acting with wisdom.

Many of them have rejoined their families.

In any meaningful international comparison, China s per capita stock of physical capital is still 8 10 times lower than in advanced countries like the United States and Japan. Without relatively high savings, a developing country like China may never catch up.

It is no wonder that the franc zone countries have been unable to catch up with the performance of neighboring economies, most of which are undergoing the most prosperous period in their history.

If I would split China, look here, Shanghai has already catched up.

Young people, housewives and children. They are all running.

In this effort, professionals in applied science, as people who would help Muslim countries catch up with the West, have enjoyed enormous prestige.

That is today s Europe in a nutshell, with America not far behind.

India s experience offers hope to other development late comers.

Its consequences are about to catch up with America, and the world.

By subjecting trade relations to embargoes, sanctions, and tests of democracy, environmental standards, and human rights, the League is likely to retard the growth of trade, and thus the chance for poor non democracies to catch up.

Unless we learn how to respect it, we will all miss the boat.

A democratic Russia would want to catch up with the West and integrate into Western institutions.

The gap between developed and developing countries continues to be impressive, although developing countries are slowly catching up.

Earlier cases of successful economic catch up, such as the US or Germany, were no different.

The United States elected a black man president. And now we are in a phase in which Asia is catching up with the West and American hegemony is being challenged.

In 2002 a special effort was made to catch up', during which the police submitted more cases.

If Germany provided this kind of leadership, other countries would be quick to follow.

Many Europeans doubt that Asia can catch up with Europe in terms of regional integration.

While it may be difficult to argue against a set of clear and transparent rules for what companies like Google and Yahoo can and cannot do within other nations, this step forward seems to have merely highlighted the lack of larger scale changes that many Cubans and Cuban Americans may be hoping for. The thumbnail image used in this post is by manfrys, used under a Creative Commons license.

We tried to follow up on their plans and how they are doing it. Bella and I decided to go spontaneously and took advice from them as well as people on the ground.

Even Burma has gotten on board, resuming diplomatic engagement with the US while trying to work its way out of China s shadow.

Developing countries can thus sustain service led growth, given the huge room they have for catch up and convergence.

In 2005, the international community renewed its commitments to help the poorest countries meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG s), which aim to halve poverty by 2015.

They were able to chase off one of the poachers and recover this ivory, because they couldn't leave it there, because it's still valuable.