Perspectives on Global Development 2014: Boosting Competitiveness to Avoid the Middle-income Trap

This volume views competitiveness as a multifaceted concept ?comprising aspects of the economy and society needed to implement change and move toward sustainable convergence. It features cross-country comparisons of productivity and efficiency, key measures of competitiveness that reflect not only how firms and industries combine their resources but also the quality of those resources.

The book argues that in order to enhance competitiveness, a powerful institutional framework is needed to create a supportive environment, along with policies to accelerate the process of upgrading and boosting competitiveness in manufacturing and service industries. Services can be a powerful engine of convergence as they can boost consumption, can be complementary to manufacturing, can increasingly be traded, and are still relatively underdeveloped in many countries. It also highlights the importance of regional policies that are compatible and complementary toward national efforts to reignite the catch-up of the whole economy.