This paper examines growth successes and failures across countries and notes the latter’s perplexing predominance among ex ante low-income economies. An explanation for this persistence of underdevelopment is proposed through an empirical investigation that brings forth evidence on the...

Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson (2007) were the first to introduce the concept of the "Inequality Possibility Frontier". Their starting point is that very poor societies will never display high Gini indexes of personal distribution of income because there is very little surplus to be...