The Lost Decades: Explaining Developing Countries' Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980-1998
The Lost Decades: Explaining Developing Countries' Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980-1998
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失去的十年：解释 1980-1998 年发展中国家尽管进行了政策改革却仍然停滞不前
DOI：
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发表时间：
2006
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
William Easterly
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作者：
William Easterly
我在本文中记录了一个之前在文献中没有受到关注的谜题。 1980-98 年，发展中国家的人均收入中位数增长率为 0.0%，而 1960-79 年为 2.5%。然而，我在本文中记录了增长回归中的标准变量——金融深度和实际高估等政策，以及健康、教育、生育和基础设施等初始条件，从 1960-79 年到 1980-98 年普遍有所改善。根据增长的标准增长回归决定因素，发展中国家的增长应该是增长而不是下降。这种停滞似乎是发展中国家争取“华盛顿共识”的一个令人失望的结果。我推测，全球利率上升、发展中国家债务负担加重、工业世界增长放缓以及以技能为导向的技术变革等全球性因素可能导致了发展中国家的停滞，尽管我无法为这些假设提供决定性的证据。我还记录了许多增长回归的错误指定，类似于 Jones (1995) 的批评，即静态变量（增长）正在对政策和初始条件等非静态变量进行回归。也许1960-79年是最不发达国家增长的不寻常时期，而1980-98年穷国的停滞则代表着富国与穷国分化的历史格局的回归。
I document in this paper a puzzle that has not received previous attention in the literature. In 1980-98, median per capita income growth in developing countries was 0.0 percent, as compared to 2.5 percent in 1960-79. Yet I document in this paper that variables that are standard in growth regressions - policies like financial depth and real overvaluation, and initial conditions like health, education, fertility, and infrastructure generally improved from 1960-79 to 1980-98. Developing country growth should have increased instead of decreased according to the standard growth regression determinants of growth. The stagnation seems to represent a disappointing outcome to the movement towards the "Washington Consensus" by developing countries. I speculate that worldwide factors like the increase in world interest rates, the increased debt burden of developing countries, the growth slowdown in the industrial world, and skill-biased technical change may have contributed to the developing countries' stagnation, although I am not able to establish decisive evidence for these hypotheses. I also document that many growth regressions are mis-specified in a way similar to the Jones (1995) critique that a stationary variable (growth) is being regressed on non-stationary variables like policies and initial conditions. It may be that the 1960-79 period was the unusual period for LDC growth, and the 1980-98 stagnation of poor countries represents a return to the historical pattern of divergence between rich and poor countries.