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The Paradox of Rich-to-Poor Capital Flow Essay

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According to the Solow Growth Model, all countries will eventually converge to their long run steady state. If we consider the usual assumptions, of countries producing the same goods with the same constant returns to scale production technology, using (homogenous) capital and labour as factors of production, differences in income per capita income will reflect differences in per capita capital. Therefore, essentially if capital is allowed to flow freely, new investments should occur only in the poorer economy. However this is certainly not the case in reality. Most of the net capital flow in the past four decades has been north-to-north (rich countries investing in other rich countries), rather than north-south (rich economies investing …show more content…

Eaton et al.‘s Pure Theory of Country Risk(1987)was published before Lucas published his paper outlining the famous Lucas Paradox(1990), and in their analysis, they claim that the reason for the lack of capital flows from north to south, or from rich to poor countries is the failure of the capital market. Lucas, on the other hand stresses more on the view that the main explaination for the Lucas Paradox is that capital, and most importantly human capital, is far less productive in poorer countries. Lucas suggests adding human capital as an extra variable will remove the paradox, and essentially, in order to improve capital flows from the rich to the poor, countries must concentrate on improving the quality of their human capital in particular, and generally capital and labour productivity. The alternative position, stresses that factors such as asymmetric information, unenforceable property rights sovereign risk are the reason behind the paradox.

According to Lucas, capital imperfections do not explain the lack of flow from rich to poor countries very well. An example he cites is that of world before 1945. Much of what is now the third world was under colonial rule at the time, and therefore subject to European legal arrangements. Investors in developed countries, such as the UK,

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