1. Introduction

This book seeks to explain why developing countries vary in their per capita incomes, in the growth of their incomes, and in their catch-up to advanced economies. The answer it attempts to provide is that development can be well defined in terms of empirically observed regularities in three principal areas: growth, jobs, and the macro drivers of growth and jobs. These regularities generalise into one law—that development can be about the quantum of change, but is much more about the composition of this change. Based on his analysis of a large sample of 145 developing countries observed over the long-run period 1980–2013, Mahmood gauges the differences in growth and employment patterns across three country-level income groups—least developed countries, lower- and middle-income countries and emerging economies—as well as their policy drivers. Each of these empirical regularities, derived in the first part of the book, implies a specific set of policies in the second part.