Thirlwall’s law posits that a country’s economic growth rate (relative to that of the rest of the world) depends on the ratio of its export’s income elasticity of demand to that of its imports. Empirical studies of this hypothesis have been almost entirely supportive, but we argue that the...

Thirlwall’s law of balance-of-payments-constrained growth predicts that an economy’s growth rate is determined by the ratio of its income elasticities of demand for exports and imports, multiplied by the world’s growth rate. Alexander and King (1999) argue that the typically supportive...