Openness and Growth

This volume records the proceedings of conference convened to appraise the Bank of England's Openness and Growth Project and its introduction, authored by the editors, James Proudman and Stephan Redding, provided the context for the five sequential sessions held on the day. In the first of six substantive chapters the editors, assisted by Marco Biachi, pose the question ‘Is international openness associated with faster economic growth?’ Responding to their own question, they provide a brief summary of growth literature to review the concepts of Σ and Φ convergence of national income per capita and posit a twin peaked distribution of international income. Discriminant analysis is proffered to suggest that while openness allows a poorer country the potential to catch up with the rich, its absence results in a lingering economic performance in the lower division. Proudman and Redding turn then to an assessment of revealed comparative advantage in trade of manufactured goods to examine changes in product specialisation in the light of recently published literature on endogenous growth and international trade. Their investigations of international trading performance finds that industries in the United Kingdom exhibit greater mobility than their German equivalents. The third chapter, by Redding, surveys the theoretical literature on openness and growth to seek procedures appropriate to test models of endogenous growth and technology adoption. This explores theoretical concerns raised already in the preceding chapters and provides a framework for the subsequent empirical investigations that examine the relative performance of the manufacturing sectors which comprise British industry

Context (archaeology · Economics · Geography · International economics · International trade · Openness to experience · Per capita · Per capita income · Sociology · Accounting · Economic Growth and Productivity · Global trade and economics