Patterns of Specialization and (Un)conditional Convergence: The Cases of Brazil, China and India

Le CIRANO collabore avec de nombreux centres et chaires de recherche universitaires dont on peut consulter la liste sur son site web. Les cahiers de la série scientifique (CS) visent à rendre accessibles des résultats de recherche effectuée au CIRANO afin de susciter échanges et commentaires. Ces cahiers sont écrits dans le style des publications scientifiques. Les idées et les opinions émises sont sous l'unique responsabilité des auteurs et ne représentent pas nécessairement les positions du CIRANO ou de ses partenaires. This paper presents research carried out at CIRANO and aims at encouraging discussion and comment. The observations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of CIRANO or its partners. Résumé / Abstract The purpose of this paper is to highlight a version of the Balassa-Samuelson effect for emerging countries with a new dataset. More than the catching-up effect, we will measure the convergence for three emerging countries: Brazil/China/India. We will compare the convergence between these countries and the productivity frontier represented by the U.S. over the past 10 years. A first contribution is that as the distance between the level of labor productivity in Brazil (China, India) and the United States decreases, the growth rate of labor productivity within the country decreases. In other words, the higher the level of productivity in an industry, the lower its growth rate, showing a convergence to the productivity frontier. A second contribution is that there is unconditional convergence as measured at the industry level.