Losing Ground: Latin American Growth from 1955 to 1999

Abstract

I evaluate Latin America's relative economic performance by combining the Solow growth coefficients from 22 rich countries and the actual factor accumulation in the region. I find that actual income growth was consistently below simulated growth for all of the countries in the sample, indicating that low productivity is likely behind slow gross domestic product growth in the region. The low productivity growth is partially explained by government consumption spending, ethnic diversity, autocracy, export composition, and educational quality.