Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of conference participants
- 1 Introduction
- PART ONE REGIONALISM AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
- PART TWO MARKET INTEGRATION AND REGIONALISM
- 7 Operationalising the theory of optimum currency areas
- Discussion
- 8 European migrants: an endangered species?
- Discussion
- 9 Geography and specialisation: industrial belts on a circular plain
- Discussion
- 10 Convergence … an overview
- Discussion
- 11 Convergence as distribution dynamics (with or without growth)
- Discussion
- Index
Discussion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of conference participants
- 1 Introduction
- PART ONE REGIONALISM AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
- PART TWO MARKET INTEGRATION AND REGIONALISM
- 7 Operationalising the theory of optimum currency areas
- Discussion
- 8 European migrants: an endangered species?
- Discussion
- 9 Geography and specialisation: industrial belts on a circular plain
- Discussion
- 10 Convergence … an overview
- Discussion
- 11 Convergence as distribution dynamics (with or without growth)
- Discussion
- Index
Summary
To discuss a survey chapter is always a difficult task, but an interesting one when the work being surveyed represents a challenging point of view on the way to understanding a crucial part of economics such as growth theory. What is the relevant framework – theoretical and empirical – for the analysis of whether poor countries are catching up with the rich? In a number of papers, in the last few years, Quah has developed a critique of the traditional approach and the outline of an alternative framework.
Quah's point of view in chapter 11 is that the catching-up question is a question about the evolution over time of the cross-sectional distribution of countries' per capita income. At the theory level, Quah argues, this question cannot be analysed by a growth model of the representative economy which has no implications for the distribution of world income; at the econometric level, neither cross-country regressions nor traditional time-series techniques are appropriate tools of analysis. As an alternative, Quah proposes a model of coalition formation where forces of consolidation and fragmentation explain the emergence of ‘convergence clubs’ and an econometric framework which allows us to estimate transition of groups of countries across different income brackets over time as well as to study the shape of the long-run cross-sectional distribution.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Market Integration, Regionalism and the Global Economy , pp. 328 - 336Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
- 3
- Cited by