Growth Diagnostics

Read section 4 of Growth Diagnostics (2005), Hausmann, Rodrik and Velasco, in the required readings folder. Only section 4 is a required reading. Pick a low- or medium income country (but not Brazil, El Salvador or Dominican Republic.) You can find “official” income classifications for countries on the World Bank’s website. If you have particular knowledge of that country, even better. Go through the HRV tree (which is Figure 1 in the HRV paper, or there is a prettier version in slide deck #18) and make a case for the most important constraint, that is, pick a box at the bottom of the tree and explain why you picked it.

Start out by looking at GDP growth over the last 15 or 20 years. You can get data from wherever you want, but the World Bank’s WDI is usually a good place to start: http://data.worldbank.org/ If you are using someone else’s analysis as part of your argument, you should cite them, but don’t spend time making citations neat and consistently formatted, just comprehensible. Absolute maximum length 5 pages, can certainly be less. Point form is fine, so long as it is very clear.