Globalization and patterns of economic development

Globalization and Patterns of Economic Development. — One of the most important challenges facing economics is to understand why globalization spurs economic growth to a greater extent in some parts of the world than in others. While part of the answer rests with differences in national economic policies, such policy differences are only part of the story. Differences in physical geography and resource endowments also cause countries to experience very different patterns of economic development in the global economy. In this article, five different patterns of economic development are described, and it is illustrated how they are related to the underlying geography, economic policies, and resource endowments of a country.