Satiation and underdevelopment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Funk, P
• 署名单位: University of Cologne
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3878(98)00091-1
• 发表日期: 1998
• 页码: 319-341
• 关键词: endogenous direction of change; induced innovations; Poverty trap; growth and inequality

摘要

In this article we show how absolute poverty and per capita growth can be sustained simultaneously in a fully integrated world economy. Poverty persists due to an endogenously sustained bias in the direction of technological change. We show in an example framework, that if free trade is opened up too early between an initially less developed and a more developed country, then part of the population of the initially less advanced country is caught in a poverty trap. If, on the other hand, individuals are restricted to trade within their own economy for a sufficiently long time, no poverty trap arises. The essential assumption is that once a person has satisfied his basic needs, he prefers high-quality commodities to low-quality commodities. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: F10; O12; O3.