Found this to be a good read, relevant to this topic: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/17440/773550JRN0200100Factor0Accumulation.pdf?sequence=1

I think that it depends. Development of technology is definitely beneficial. As for liberalization of economy, there are both the cases of success and not. I was interested in this question about 20 years in the case of Eastern Europe and FSU. In some studies it was shown how the GDP dynamics was there. Russia is one of the worst cases, while Poland and Czech republic were rather successful.

Recognizing that there is no blueprint for economic growth and development for countries; I’ll recommend not singling out any effort(s) made in the past by policymakers that have proven to be successful based on a country's unique situation.

I’ll say education has been an essential driver because with knowledge comes freedom—economic, social, and way of life.

To delve more in-depth, I’ll recommend these books

· The end of poverty

· Guns, Germs, and Steel

· The great escape

· Beyond poverty and affluence

· Bridges out of poverty

That is a tricky question, because it depends what you are interesting in. Are you interested in growth, or in development. Those are different things.

What i will defend here is based on (a) the book Development Macroeconomics; (b) the CEPAL's book: Neoestructuralismo y corrientes heterodoxas en América Latinay el Caribe a inicios del siglo XXI; and my own thesis (that I will upload the first chapter in English at august.

(1) - What drove growth in emerging economies for the last 3 decades?

Mainly, growth occurred as a consequence of international trade, specially as a result from prices oscillation on primary goods. As a result of the neo-liberal economic policies adopted since the late 1980's, most emerging countries suffered either a de-industrialization, or a profound specialization on industries for exportation. As a result, their economies lost their endogenous capacity to generate growth. Therefore, only international economy was able to cause growth for them. Either through foreign investment, or through prices change in export products.

(2) - What drove development in emerging economies for the last 3 decades?

Looking at the successful cases, the countries that were able to develop a more complex intern market were the countries that developed a diversified economy, including industry to supply their national demand. Usually, countries that opted to invest in internal market had lower growth rate when primary goods were in a high price. But also had higher growth rate as the international market entered in a crisis, or were able to cut the crisis short.

Of course, when we talk about development, it is necessary to take a country-by-country approach, since countries ARE NOT equal on natural reserves, market sizes, avaible capital, etc.

Dear Apoena

Economic growth is a condition to get development, but is not enough. Economic growth is quantitative

Economic development is qualitative

In my personal opinion, public investment is a key to drive economic growth.

I want to share with you this article Public Investment as an Engine of Growth Prepared by Andrew M. Warner Authorized for distribution by Andrew Berg and Catherine Pattillo August 2014. IMF Working Paper

This paper looks the rol of infrastructure and public capital (investment public) drives have succeeded in accelerating economic growth in low-income countries.

Dear Martha,

again, that depend on each school of thought you adopted. There is no simple answers, since Development is one of the most controversial topics out there.

You said Public Investment is the key... well, that depend on the real condition the country is in, how it's input-output matrix of the country is composed, and how the public investment is maid. Otherwise, you could end up with an artificial growth on demand without an proper growth on the supply. In that case, you could have higher inflation, and unsatisfactory development on key sectors. That was basic what happened on Brasil from 2000 to 2014: we had surplus from international commerce, and our government expanded it spending, but industry shrunk! We even had a reduction on our historical investment rate on production. Even with GDP growth!

So, is GDP growth enough to say we had economic growth? Or should we take account of our industrial production? That is not just a question of considering quantitative or qualitative indicators. After all, both industrial production and GDP are quantitative measurements.

That is the problem with simple answers. You (1) end up sounding as a snob research, that pretend that all other schools does not exist (what should be avoided at all cost); and (2) you adopt a partial solution as a universal answer, what tend to bring disasters to countries economies. That is not a thing you want to play with....

Hello Apoena:

I want to say that public investmente, is one of the factors that explains economic growth that´s why I attached an article about it. It´s important to say that in the case of Mexican economy in the 1970´s, public investment had impact in the economic growth.

There are lots of variables that can drive growth and it could be country specific. However, technological advancement via public/private investment will certainly be up there.

You´re right Emmanuel, in fact Gross Domestic Product=

C+I+G+X-M

These variables drive economic growth

The fact that C+I+G+X-M = GDP, is not enough to say that those are the variables that drives economic growth. It is very possible that exports, for instance, can actually harm a country instead of driving growth. About this, see Celso Furtado and Raul Prebisch works. You can also check Bo Soderstein and Charles Kindleberger to see more details about some theoretical limitations to international trade as a mean of development.

The same goes about public investments. If they are unproductive investments, they can result rather in inflation than in growth. Again, it is wise to stay away from answers took by students manuals. They usually oversimplify the economic reality.

Technology is not part of GDP, but is also considered an important factor for economic growth.

Sorry to spam this discussion, but this very important.

Specially because the original question was: (a) was liberalization or (b)technology development that brought growth for developing economies.

Raul Prebish worked for The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal Problems (ECLAC) focused on the particular features of development in countries (Latinomaerican) on the periphery of the global system that were specialized in producing commodities and foodstuffs. Prebish analysed Latin America`s position`s in the world economy economic under concept Centre-Periphery, long term deterioration in terms of trade for primary goods. He is one of the most important thinkers about The Structuralist Theory. I have read many works: “The Economic Development of Latin America and Its principal problems 1948, is one of them. However, the economic situation has changed in Latin American Countries and in the world.

Celso Furtado, incorporates Brazilian and Latin American history into structuralist theory.

It is important to consider the contributions of these great economists to understand the current situation

Le disquisizioni di Apoena sono inconfutabili, pienamente condivisibili. Quando si parla di crescita e sviluppo, algoritmi diversi ma interdipendenti, si deve tener conto oltre della produzione, degli investimenti, etc., anche di ciò che produce il suolo in materia di risorse naturali. Bisogna tener conto del consumo p.c. di risorse nell'area di 1,78 ha/g, quindi della bio-capacità e della riserva ecologica, cioè se il territorio in esame è in debito o in credito ecologico. Questo è il prodromo per una valutazione corretta della crescita e sviluppo, oltre che del commercio internazionale, che oggi ha preso una distorta via nel non rispetto di alcuni standard, e degli stili di vita influenzati da una comunicazione il cui molok è il profitto.

According to World Bank , Emerging and Developing economies (EMDEs) growth is expected to reach 4.5 percent in 2018. The growth is driven by commodity exporters and Private consumption growth. Global Economic Prospects, The turning of the Tide?, June 2018

Economic and political reform of the Eastern bloc. In 1990, East bloc was already practically dissolved and the actual events took different forms in different countries: (1) Dissolution of the Soviet Union, (2) Democratic revolution of East European countries, (3) China's Reform and Opening-up.

Similar movement occurred in India: Economic reform since 1991 under Prime Minister Rao. China's Reform and Opening-up started in 1978 but it took full bloom since 1992 by the adoption of the new doctrine Socialist Market Economy in the 14th Congress of Chinese Communist Party.

By the change of these big political reform and revolution changed international economic relations. BRIGs countries (except Brasil) appeared in the world economic arena and began to play as a fierce competitors. The restrictive measures were lifted and tariffs were lowered. In addition to these institutional reform there occurred Information and Communication Revolution (ICT revolution). These two moments gave a big drive for China and India and other emerging economies .

China and India (each with more than 1 billion population and covering one third of the world population) began to grow at very high rates around 10 percent. This gave a tremendous influence both good and bad. World growth rate was elevated but the developed countries like Japan, USA and EU suffered much from this. Even though, the total world economy grew with relatively high speed. Other developing countries benefited substantially from this change of economic climate. Four Asian Tigers (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) 's high performance is doubtful if the 2 big engines of growth stayed stagnant. The question of Latin American countries are rather different. Their economy exhibited chronic troubles not only in these 3 decades, but since 1950's. It may be better say that they have more structural problems than contingent ones.

In these 3 decades, world manufacturing system changed enormously. Now we see rapid growth of Global Value Chains. According to UNCTAD stat 2017, the production conducted within GVCs accounts 85% of the total trade in 2016. They are helping to accumulate experience in production chains and are giving chances to the participant countries a chance upgrade their production capability. Mainstream trade theories could not catching up with this big change, because they have been excluding by assumption input trade or trade of intermediate goods.

This is an simple story for these 3 decades. Then, the most important drivers of world economic growth in these 3 decades are, first, economic reform and opening-up and, second, ICT revolution. Quite simple, isn't it?

Martha Pantoja, you are mistaking expressions of results as something that drives economy.

The formula

　　C+I+G+X-M = GDP

is an identity that holds by definitions. To argue the growth of GDP, it is necessary to observe how each of terms of left-hand side is determined. Moreover, C, I and G are correlated. For example, C depends much on the past GDP. I depends whether C is growing or not. These are only superficial, aggregated numbers. You should ask how these aggregates are driven. If then, your arguments would be very different. You read many books, but I wonder if you are really considering the basic processes how economy works, grows and develops.

Yoshinori:

I only indicate data from the World Bank, about the drivers of economic growth in emerging economies.

Dear Eyal Ronen

As for Total Factor Productiity and the concept of the productivity itself, pleas read my comments 2 days ago to the question of Aurelio Hess: Productivity: How does it impact on Economic Development?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Productivity_How_does_it_impact_on_Economic_Development#view=5b7a7c6deb03898794785bed

I here copy and paste my answer:

Aurelio Hess's question contains a serious theoretical problem. Productivity is a measure (what? I will argue later) that is related to productions. Factors of production such as labor, capital and land are inputs to the production. If the productivity is defined as an aspect of production, factors of production have no productivity. This is a gross confusion. As Leonardo Andriola pointed, there is no productivity of labor. An article of Forbes mentioned by Khulood Obaid admits, labor productivity is difficult to measure. Productivity is related to how we work. To talk of productivity of production factors is a category mistake we have to exclude.

I understand why Hess made such a fundamental error. Ashok Pundir and Marco Rao talked about total factor productivity. This is one of the most popular concepts in growth theory which starts from Solow's seminal paper:

Solow, Robert (1957) "Technical change and the aggregate production function". Review of Economics and Statistics. 39 (3): 312–320.

Total factor productivity (TFP) was a name given by him to the Solow residual, i.e. the output growth which was not explained by the increases of factor inputs. Solow suggested this can be explained as the contribution of technical changes and this explanation was accepted by wide people. However, if TFP may indicate a productivity, it is not the productivity of something called total factor. There is no such thing.

Khulood Obaid posed a good question: what is productivity? Hanna M. Madanat presented a concrete procedure to calculate the productivity. She is right. If the prices and wage rates are given, her procedure is the most standard way of measuring productivity. However, productivity and prices or unit costs (either unit product cost or unit labor cost) are closely related. If the labor productivity is high, the unit labor cost is low. If input goods are cheap, unit product cost is low. So the most argument on measuring productivity is formulated in a circular way. This poses a serious problem when we want to define or measure productivity of a nation. On the national level, wage rate and labor productivity are almost the same thing. In other words, wage rate and productivity are two sides of a paper. It is rare to find any definition of productivity that are free of logical circularity.

Another difficult question emerges, because we are now in a globalized economy. No single nation is now a closed economy. Productivity depends on the trade pattern that a nation occupies in the world economy. Then, to define productivity properly, it is necessary to have a theory that can explain how the wage rates and prices are determined. Such a theory now exists. It is the new theory of international values. It is a theory which determines international values (i.e. wage rates of nations and prices of goods) and global patterns of specialization at the same time. Productivity of a nation can only be defined by the total structure of sets of productions techniques that each nation potentially possesses. My conclusion in this post is that real wage rate of a nation is the unique possible measure of the productivity of a nation.

See my paper: Shiozawa, Y. (2017) The new theory of international values: an overview. Chapter 1 in Shiozawa et al. (eds) A New Construction of Ricardian Theory of International Values: Analytical and Historical Approach, Springer, Singapore. You can read a draft version of the paper in RG.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304717720_The_New_Theory_of_International_Values_An_Overview

Thanks, Yoshinori Shiozawa. It is not something I have ever looked into, but perhaps this explains why I have always found the concept of productivity rather difficult to grasp. And yet it is so widely used in economics. I know economics contains many doubtful concepts, but why do you think that of productivity is so little questioned?

I have argued this point two months ago in Real-World Economcs Review Blog.

The second reply to Lars Syll's post Marginal productivity theory

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/marginal-productivity-theory/

I here copy and paste my reply. The problem lies in the very deep place of the neoclassical theory. Very few mainstream economists question it, except really great economists like H. A. Simon and Felipe and McCombie that I cited in the following.

June 28, 2018 at 3:07 pm Reply

Lars Syll argues mainly irrelevance of marginal productivity theory in explaining wage discrepancies that widened tremendously in these decades. He is right, but in order to bring down marginal productivity theory it is not sufficient. We have to note and know its logical inconsistencies.

Syll referred to Sraffa in the 1920’s and the Cambridge capital controversy. When we talk about marginal productivity, we should also not that the concept of production function of type Y = f(L, K) must be questioned. For a Cobb-Douglas production function, we have classical criticism by A. Shaik (1974) and H. A. Simon (1979). The latter is the paper he published in Scandinavian Journal of Economics when he was given a Nobel prize in economics. We have to keep in mind that an objection of such a famous scholar had no big effects in bringing down the production function and marginal productivity theory. It is worth noting that J. Felipe and J. L. S. McCombie produced many papers, which were combined and synthesized in a book (2014) Aggregate Production Function and the Measurement of Technical Change. : Not Even Wrong, Cheltenham.

The second explanation that Lars Syll cites is globalization. He notes that

• These mainstream trade theories are really not applicable in the world of today, and they are certainly not able to explain the international pattern that has developed during the last decade.

If he knows the state of the art of trade theory, he should have added that a new theory that stands on the classical political economy tradition is now constructed and has superiority in various points. If I pick only one aspect, the new theory of international value is a theory which admits input trade. As is well known, there are four generations of trade theory: (1) (textbook) Ricardian trade theory, (2) Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson theory, (3) New trade theory a la Krugman, and (4) New new trade theory a la Melitz. First three generations exclude input trade by assumption and the fourth is essentially a theory of an open economy. Today’s globalization is a complex system of production networks across country borders. Now heterodox economics has a superior theory than neoclassical trade theories. See my for details:

Y. Shiozawa 2017 The New Theory of International Values: an Overview.

Technology has long been one of the most import drivers of economic growth. Digitalization and automation of production

I think the increasing awareness in wealth management and emphasis on social finance.

Monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies are important drivers of the accumulation of wealth in emerging economies, the most relevant examples are the telecommunications and mining sector

I'm thinking of people, in the last three decades, technological development has driven the wealth of some people, but curiously not of the countries.

Martha,

I have send you a paper. Please read it.

Dear Yoshinori

Thank you for your invaluable support in my path for the understanding of economic behavior.