IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uow/depec1/wp04-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Convergence of Per Capita GDP Across SAARC Countries

Author

Abstract

In this paper we have examined the issue of convergence of per capita GDP across 7 South Asian countries during 1960-2000 using World Bank data. Empirical results failed to find evidence of s convergence, b convergence and conditional b (bc) convergence in South Asia. The reasons for non-convergence of per capita GDP can be explained by low and falling volume of intra-country trade, weak governance and low level of growth achieved by the individual countries. Further, non-convergence can be attributed to explanations provided by endogenous growth models.

Suggested Citation

  • Chowdhury, Khorshed, 2004. "Convergence of Per Capita GDP Across SAARC Countries," Economics Working Papers wp04-07, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp04-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@commerce/@econ/documents/doc/uow012167.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier X, 1996. "The Classical Approach to Convergence Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 1019-1036, July.
    3. Ben-David, Dan, 1998. "Convergence clubs and subsistence economies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 155-171, February.
    4. Deininger, Klaus & Squire, Lyn, 1996. "A New Data Set Measuring Income Inequality," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(3), pages 565-591, September.
    5. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for growth and distribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2138, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Galor, Oded, 1996. "Convergence? Inferences from Theoretical Models," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 1056-1069, July.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    8. Chatterji, Monojit, 1992. "Convergence Clubs and Endogenous Growth," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 8(4), pages 57-69, Winter.
    9. Nuxoll, Daniel A, 1994. "Differences in Relative Prices and International Differences in Growth Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1423-1436, December.
    10. N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
    11. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. World Bank, 2002. "World Development Indicators 2002," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13921.
    13. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    14. Abramovitz, Moses, 1986. "Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 385-406, June.
    15. de la Fuente, Angel, 1997. "The empirics of growth and convergence: A selective review," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 23-73, January.
    16. Amnon Levy & Khorshed Chowdhury, 1995. "A Geographical Decomposition of Intercountry Income Inequality," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 37(4), pages 1-17, December.
    17. M Chatterji, "undated". "Convergence Clubs And Endogenous Growth," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 039, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    18. Baumol, William J & Wolff, Edward N, 1988. "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1155-1159, December.
    19. Dowrick, Steve & Quiggin, John, 1994. "International Comparisons of Living Standards and Tastes: A Revealed-Preference Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 332-341, March.
    20. Maddison, Angus, 1987. "Growth and Slowdown in Advanced Capitalist Economies: Techniques of Quantitative Assessment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 649-698, June.
    21. Dowrick, Steve & Quiggin, John, 1997. "True Measures of GDP and Convergence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 41-64, March.
    22. Farhad Rassekh, 1998. "The Convergence Hypothesis: History, Theory, and Evidence," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 85-105, January.
    23. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10091 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    25. Perotti, Roberto, 1992. "Income Distribution, Politics, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 311-316, May.
    26. Jonathan Temple, 1999. "The New Growth Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 112-156, March.
    27. Danny Quah, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0324, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    28. Anand, Sudhir & Kanbur, S. M. R., 1993. "The Kuznets process and the inequality--development relationship," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 25-52, February.
    29. Baumol, William J, 1986. "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare: What the Long-run Data Show," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 1072-1085, December.
    30. Quah, Danny T., 1996. "Empirics for economic growth and convergence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1353-1375, June.
    31. Quah, Danny T, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 27-59, March.
    32. Abramovitz, Moses, 1990. "The Catch-Up Factor in Postwar Economic Growth," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 28(1), pages 1-18, January.
    33. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1980. "Selection of Regressors," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(2), pages 331-354, June.
    34. Zind, Richard G., 1991. "Income convergence and divergence within and between LDC groups," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 719-727, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Naved Ahmad, 2008. "Corrupt clubs and the convergence hypothesis," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 21-28.
    2. Shabari Paul Dey & Debasis Neogi, 2015. "Testing Sigma and Unconditional Beta Convergence of GDP for SAARC Countries: Can Inclusion of China further Consolidate the Convergence?," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 16(5), pages 845-855, October.
    3. Uzma Zia, 2019. "An Evidence of Diverging SAARC Economies," PIDE-Working Papers 2019:170, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    4. Daly, Vince & Khan, Ghulam Yahya, 2016. "Growth Convergence and Convergence Clubs in SAARC," Economics Discussion Papers 2016-1, School of Economics, Kingston University London.
    5. Jahan, Sumbul, 2013. "Does Convergence Exist?," MPRA Paper 48836, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Suresh Moktan, 2008. "Evaluating the Intra–regional Exports and Trade Creation and Trade Diversion Effects of Trade Agreements in SAARC Countries," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 9(2), pages 233-260, September.
    7. Swapan K. Bhattacharya & Gouranga G. Das, 2014. "Can South–South Trade Agreements Reduce Development Deficits?," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 9(3), pages 253-285, December.
    8. Naved Ahmad, 2008. "Corrupt clubs and the convergence hypothesis," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 21-28.
    9. Muhammad Safdar & Ahmad Nawaz, 2020. "Testing The Convergence Hypothesis In Solow Growth Model: A Statistical Evidence From Saarc Economies," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 9(2), pages 60-73, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chowdhury, Khorshed & Mallik, Girijasankar, 2007. "SPair-Wise Output Convergence in East Asia and the Pacific: An Application of Stochastic Unit Root Test," Economics Working Papers wp07-07, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    2. Chowdhury, K, 2005. "What´s Happening to Per Capita Gdp in the ASEAN Countries?. An Analysis of Convergence, 1960-2001," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 5(3).
    3. Peter Mulder & Henri Groot, 2007. "Sectoral Energy- and Labour-Productivity Convergence," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 36(1), pages 85-112, January.
    4. Fulvio Castellacci, 2007. "Evolutionary And New Growth Theories. Are They Converging?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 585-627, July.
    5. Li, Kui-Wai & Zhou, Xianbo & Pan, Zhewen, 2016. "Cross-country output convergence and growth: Evidence from varying coefficient nonparametric method," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 32-41.
    6. Park, Donghyun, 2003. "An empirical examination of income convergence in the Asia-Pacific region," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 497-502, June.
    7. Durlauf, Steven N. & Quah, Danny T., 1999. "The new empirics of economic growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 235-308, Elsevier.
    8. Cem Ertur & Julie Le Gallo & Catherine Baumont, 2006. "The European Regional Convergence Process, 1980-1995: Do Spatial Regimes and Spatial Dependence Matter?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 29(1), pages 3-34, January.
    9. Nicolas Debarsy & Cem Ertur, 2006. "The European Enlargement Process and Regional Convergence Revisited: Spatial Effects Still Matter," ERSA conference papers ersa06p198, European Regional Science Association.
    10. Miketa, Asami & Mulder, Peter, 2005. "Energy productivity across developed and developing countries in 10 manufacturing sectors: Patterns of growth and convergence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 429-453, May.
    11. Peter Mulder & Henri Groot, 2007. "Sectoral Energy- and Labour-Productivity Convergence," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 36(1), pages 85-112, January.
    12. Daniel J. Henderson, 2010. "A test for multimodality of regression derivatives with application to nonparametric growth regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 458-480.
    13. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Adriana Di Liberto, 2007. "Convergence and Divergence in Neoclassical Growth Models with Human Capital," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 289-322.
    15. Azomahou, Théophile T. & El ouardighi, Jalal & Nguyen-Van, Phu & Pham, Thi Kim Cuong, 2011. "Testing convergence of European regions: A semiparametric approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1202-1210, May.
    16. Giovanni Caggiano & Leone Leonida, 2009. "International output convergence: evidence from an autocorrelation function approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(1), pages 139-162.
    17. Paul Johnson & Chris Papageorgiou, 2020. "What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 129-175, March.
    18. Farhad Noorbakhsh, "undated". "International Convergence and Inequality of Human Development: 1975-2001," Working Papers 2006_3, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    19. Michelle Baddeley, 2006. "Convergence or Divergence? The Impacts of Globalisation on Growth and Inequality in Less Developed Countries," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 391-410.
    20. Peter Mulder & Raymond J.G.M. Florax & Henri L.F. de Groot, 2011. "A Spatial Perspective on Global Energy Productivity Trends," Chapters, in: Raymond J.G.M. Florax & Henri L.F. de Groot & Peter Mulder (ed.), Improving Energy Efficiency through Technology, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Per Capita GDP; Convergence;

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure

    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:uow:depec1:wp04-07. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Peter Siminski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuowau.html .

    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.