Economics of Developing and Transitions Countries

This chapter in the book describes the difference in economic growth between countries. There are a lot of problems in certain group of countries. Around a quarter of the world`s population still lives at a bare subsistence levels and more than three-quarters live on an income that is below 20 % of the income in the USA.
The richest countries with the highest per capita incomes are reffered to by the United Nations as developed countries. The poorer countries are reffered as the developing countries. And there is another group of countries. These are countries of the former Soviet bloc that used to have centrally planned economies but now are trying to build market economies. These are known as transition economies.
There can be a number of restraints that can stop or slow down the economic development. One of the reason can be the lack of natural resources. A country with inadequate suplies of natural resources will find growth in income more difficult to achieve than one that is richly endowed with such resources. If a country has some kind of resource it has to use them efficiently becouse there are a lot of problems which can occure if the resouces are used inefficiently. A big problem in developing countries is the rapid population growth. There are a lot of problems for example in Africa where in most of the countries population in growing faster then the GDP. Also a big problem in these countries is the lack of education for most of the people. Banks and other financial institutions have a big role in economic growth and investments. The problem is that in the poor countries people often do not trust banks. Key services such as transportation and a communications are essential for economic development.

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