Here’s a fun thought experiment.
What if Sachin Tendulkar agreed to give you a one-on-one batting masterclass for an hour? One hour with the Little Master, who will carefully observe your technique, our shots and your overall batting, and then proceed to tell you how he thinks you can become better. It’d be fairly safe to assume that you’ll be a much better batsman at the end of that session, right?
Now, what if Sachin also did a one-one-one masterclass with Virat Kohli? Here’s a batsman who’s at the peak of his game, and who is, in his own right, a very accomplished batsman indeed. Here’s the question: will it be equally safe to assume that Kohli will be a much better batsman at the end of that session?
Hopefully, all of you agree that Kohli was already a very good batsman That masterclass won’t hurt him, but the rate of improvement won’t be all that much, because he was so very good already.
But you? Your rate of improvement will be stratospheric, because you are a novice in batting compared to Kohli.
Similarly, what will be the impact of a spanking new expressway connecting two cities in America? Marginal, because they already have a pretty good network of highways. What will be the impact of a spanking new expressway connecting two cities in India? Much larger, because in all likelihood, this will be the first such road between these cities.
The flow of commerce between these cities will be higher than earlier, the measurement of which will show up as an increase in GDP. This is a central prediction of the Solow model.
Countries with a low level of capital will, other things kept aside, grow faster than countries with a high level of capital. America will not grow at anything in excess of 3% per year, while India will consider it a tragedy if we grow at less than 5% a year.
That doesn’t mean America is somehow worse than India when it comes to economic performance. Of course America will grow slower, because she has seen so much growth already. We, on the other hand, are just about beginning our growth story. Villages in India will see electricity for the first time, and many Indians will travel in a car, on a national highway, for the first time in their lives. These indicators of progress will all be registered in our GDP measurements as growth, and so India will (or at least ought to) grow faster than America in the years to come.
So countries with a low capital stock tend to grow faster. Tend to, unfortunately, isn’t a guarantee of growth. In other words, not all countries with a low capital stock grow rapidly – some don’t.
What holds countries back is institutions – and that’s what we will be looking at next.
EconForEverybody 