Room: 3380
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Since the late 2000s, economists have reached a consensus on the existence of a middle income trap but have yet to theorize the politics of the trap. Key characteristics central to the problems of middle income countries (especially larger countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America) include low human capital, low investment in innovation, high inequality, and high informality. Solutions to these problems require substantial institutional capacity (as do social welfare programs), but at just the time when political demands for, and ability to supply, these institutions are weak. Politics in particular are stalled by fractured social groups (especially business and labor) and states with little fiscal and bureaucratic capacity, conditions that resulted in large measure from previous trajectories of growth.