Regularities Redux: Success Stories and Traps—What Has Worked for Developing Countries?

Abstract

The concluding chapter takes stock of the book’s theoretical and empirical contributions and revisits the overarching aim: what can be empirically demonstrated to explain income differences among the three categories of developing countries? The book’s three empirical regularities in per capita growth and jobs show, in turn, how policies can leverage what ‘works’. Mahmood then applies a more stringent test of what works by regrouping his sample of developing countries by income growth: in terms of those that doubled their incomes, those that raised them by only half, and those that stagnated. This reveals that the regularities observed still explain levels of income as well as changes in income over time. It also confirms the explanatory and policy variables used, especially those linking productive transformation and productive jobs.