Question

Are certain countries doomed to remain emerging? please summarize your response, write 100 words, no more than 100 words .

Thank you

Answer 1

Global trade was the main convergence force. Cheaper and easier shipping and communications have extended supply chains around the globe. Trade expanded nearly twice as fast as the world economy's growth rate between 1994 and 2007, spurring much quicker catch-up than in the past. In an age of "Brexit," demands in the U.S. to withdraw from the North America Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and in the face of rising populist nationalism in Europe, proponents of globalization that point to convergence and the decline in global poverty that it has fostered as happy outcomes of growing global connectivity.

Latin America and Africa's middle-income countries would look much worse if they also done so. In short, the increase in productivity in both regions caused by the boom of global trade has come at the expense of structural change that reduces production.

For Africa, the continent's relatively low levels of growth and industrialization offer huge potential. Yet Africans will have to expand manufacturing and tradable services in order to realize it. The big challenge in Latin America is to reverse the trend towards informality. Sixty-one percent of all Latin American employees are working in the non-tradable services sector, mainly in small businesses.

Unless, as seems likely, developing countries are to catch up more slowly in the foreseeable future with advanced economies, it is important to tackle the unequal geography of convergence. Where Asia stands apart, it has contributed to overall economic growth by ensuring that its trend of structural change. Governments need to find ways to imitate it in Africa and Latin America.