catch up growth

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the phenomenon in which economies that are further behind the technological and productivity frontier tend to grow faster than more advanced economies because they can adopt existing technologies and practices rather than bearing the cost of developing new ones; the catch-up hypothesis, associated with economists Moses Abramovitz and Robert Barro, predicts conditional convergence — that poor countries will grow faster than rich ones if they have the institutional and educational capacity to absorb advanced technologies; for Africa, catch-up growth theory offers optimism about the continent's development trajectory while also underlining the importance of investing in the human capital and governance quality that determine whether growth potential translates into actual convergence