This paper reviews the literature on the Middle Income Trap and compares Turkey to the rest of the trapped and non-trapped (non-middle income trapped) countries. We analyze country experiences by focusing on the role of well-designed and high quality education system to avoid the trap. When we...

Data from WDI show that developing countries are easily caught in the ¡°middle income trap.¡± To interpret the mechanism of the ¡°middle income trap,¡± this paper focuses on: (1) Based on the empirical framework of economic growth, we perform an empirical research on the determinants of...

This paper investigates how innovation potential of a country contributes to avoid or escape the middle income trap. We measure innovation potentials of 77 countries from 1975 to 2010 from patent data. Then, we test whether indigenous innovative efforts or foreign ones help avoid and escape...

Costa Rica has some concerns for the "middle income trap" stemming from her perceived weakening export competitiveness, intensifying competition in attracting FDI inflow; and apparent lack of innovation capabilities. Quantitative analyses on the impact of recent FTAs suggest only large firms...

The “middle-income trap” is the phenomenon of hitherto rapidly growing economies stagnating at middle-income levels and failing to graduate into the ranks of high-income countries. In this study we examine the middle-income trap as a special case of growth slowdowns, which are identified as...