Why poor countries stopped catching up
Summary
This post revisits the Solow convergence debate, tracks the arc from the 2021 claim of a new era of unconditional convergence to the 2025 reversal, and argues that China’s commodity boom and related Dutch disease explain much of the observed slowdown in poor-country growth. It critically questions the role of governance and trade as sole drivers of convergence and offers a skeptical but nuanced take on the policy implications for emerging economies.