Latin America at a Crossroads

New paper by Carlos Medeiros, with Nicholas Trebat, at the Centro Sraffa (h/t Alejandro Fiorito, and Revista Circus). From the abstract:

This paper discusses the connections established in recent non–neoclassical literature between growth, structural change and income distribution in large developing economies. We argue that though many analyses have the merit of reintroducing income distribution as a factor in economic growth, they rely almost exclusively on macroeconomic theory, and thus ignore the structural changes that have taken place in recent decades and the ways in which structural aspects of an economy (such as resource availability, market size and geopolitical factors) affect policy options and growth. We argue that Latin American countries today face the same challenge that has constrained their development trajectory historically: to diversify their economic structure through new technological capabilities and greater equality and social progress.

Download paper here. 

Structural Transformation in China 1952-2013

Just checking the Chinese economic data (subscription required), and decided to look at the structural changes more or less since the Communist takeover, as shown below.

The interesting thing is that while the size of agriculture diminished significantly throughout the whole period, industry more or less reached its current level at the beginning of the opening period. Most of the growth in the post-liberalization period has been in services, which has gone hand in hand with the urbanization process.

Of course the results are a little bit deceiving. The primary sector is basically agriculture and the secondary contains the bulk of manufacturing, but the tertiary includes some industries too. For the definitions go here. Still interesting result. By the way, by 2013 the tertiary sector is finally bigger than the secondary.