panel of countries: that at about $17,000 (2005 PPP adjusted dollars) fast growing economies’ growth rates tend to slow down by two percentage points. It is not clear that this is evidence of a MIC trap. First of all, the slowdown threshold is at a level that would probably correspond to a high-income country by World Bank standards, depending upon the PPP adjustment factor involved. Secondly, a slowdown by two percentage points in per capita growth – for example, from 9 to 7 percent or 8 to 6 percent certainly maintains a country on a rapid pace towards convergence, as discussed in sections III and IV above. Finally, if we were to define the MIC trap relative to a leading country (or group of leading countries), a more relevant metric would be the country's growth vis-à-vis the leader's. Aiyar et al (2013) find that TFP slowdowns in MICs are more frequent than in HICs and LICs. They explore structural, institutional, economic, and policy determinants of these slowdowns.

A more general approach to patterns of growth is laid out in Pritchett (2000), motivated by the fact that a single time trend may not represent an adequate characterization of the evolution of GDP per capita for most countries. Here we reproduce his results with another decade or so of data. The additional decade was one in which developing countries, in general, and middle-income countries, in particular, experienced more favorable growth. Various macroeconomic crisis episodes – the multiple Latin American episodes, the Russian crisis, the Asian crisis—were left behind, and faster and more stable growth was restored across a wide variety of developing countries.

**Table 6:  Patterns of Growth Since 1950, by number of countries by income classification**

|End-year WB<br>classification* below:|Steep<br>Hills|Hills|Plateaus|Mountains|Plains|(Mild)<br>Accelerators|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|_LICs(39)_|0|1|6|8|10|14|
|_L-MICs(31)_|2|6|6|6|4|7|
|_U-MICs(23)_|1|6|6|0|1|9|
|_HICs(11)_|0|8|2|0|0|1|
|_o/w HIC (21)_<br>_“Escapees”**_|7|10|1<br>(Germany!)|0|0|3|

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from Maddison, World Bank.

*In 1950, WB classification did not exist, so we use the end-year. (Admittedly, this opens up a tautology.)

**Relative standard for non-HIC status in 1950 was used, given differences in Maddison and World Bank data. Less than 50 percent of US in 1950 (or initial data year for that country) was used as threshold.

In this section we report several of Pritchett's (2000) statistics and we also include the average growth differential of a given country relative to the United States, which may prove to be useful in explaining the evolution of a country's relative income status. Pritchett's (2000) characterization of growth patterns into steep hills, hills, plateaus, mountains, plains and (mild) accelerators is very informative. The distribution of these patterns of growth is described in Table 6 below. The methodology involves identifying break points in OLS growth rates across countries and then categorizing the pattern of growth based on the pre-break growth rate and post-break growth rate. For example, plateaus would be a pattern whereby countries grew by greater than 1.5 percent pre-break, but then leveled off into a slower, but still positive growth 18