rate.<sup>26</sup> The complete results of the full calculations by country are presented in Appendix 2. The summary of how countries fit into patterns is presented in Table 6.

Since the World Bank Classifications did not exist in 1950, Table 6 presents a bit of a tautology: end-period HICs would tend to have performed better than non-HICs during the preceding decades, and end-period LICs would have tended to perform worse. That is how they ended up in these categories. On the other hand, in relative terms, our earlier analysis of transition matrices revealed that there is a lot of persistence across relative categories. Table 6 then shows that the actual patterns of growth across MICs vary substantially. There are a few “super-fast” examples, some fast examples, and many (mild) accelerators that offer some hope for the future for MICs. Unfortunately, there are also many “plateaus”, “mountains” (growth collapses) and “plains” observed. Similarly, there are different paths to success when examining the last row of Table 6. While most are “hills” or even “steep hills” (the super-stars), there are also several examples of more gradual paths to success.

Take, for instance, the set of countries that were successful in making the transition to high income countries according to the two income groupings that we have adopted in the previous section. We then compare selected indicators for those countries that still remain MICs (“still” MICs) and fell within one standard deviation interval of the initial relative income levels of those countries that successfully became HICs. For Table 4, we have that the median and mean relative income for those countries that transitioned into HIC status were 0.36 and 0.32. The standard deviation was about 0.15, giving us a lower bound of 0.17 and an upper bound of 0.47.<sup>27</sup> For Table 5, the median and mean initial relative income for the “new HICs” was 0.26 and 0.28, with a standard deviation of 0.12, giving us a lower and upper bound of 0.16 and 0.39.<sup>28</sup> A very revealing picture emerges from Tables 7 and 8. The initial HICs have more or less grown at a similar pace as the United States –the average growth differential is negligible. In general, they are characterized by relatively low volatility –provided that we believe a single trend growth describes well the growth pattern of a given country—, and with a few exceptions, most of them are characterized by what Pritchett denominates “hills”. The average of the ratio of the final GDP per capita and the minimum GDP per capita for the initial HICs is about 3.5.

> 26 According to Pritchett's classification, we have: i) steep hills: pre- and post-break OLS growth are higher than 3%, ii) hills: pre- and post-break OLS growth are higher than 1.5%, iii) plateaus: pre-break OLS growth is higher than 1.5%, post-break OLS growth is positive but less than 1.5%, iv) mountains: pre-break OLS growth is higher than 1.5%, post-break OLS growth is negative, v) plains: pre- and post-break OLS growth are less than 1.5%, vi) (mild) accelerators: pre-break OLS growth less than 1.5%, post-break OLS growth is higher than 1.5%.

> 27 The maximum value for the relative income in 1950 was 0.57 and the minimum was 0.09 for the set of “new HICs”.

> 28 The maximum value for the relative income in 1950 was 0.44 and the minimum was 0.09 for the set of “new HICs” using the relative income thresholds depicted in Table 5.

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