Discussion Question: high income vs low income nations

General Instructions:

Discussion boards are mean to encourage an exchange of ideas. To do this, you are required to make two posts: One post directly answering my discussion question (see below), and a second post as a comment on someone else’s answer (of course being respectful of the person).

Each post should be relevant to the topic, contain references to economic concepts, and be at least 200 words (each).

Scoring:

The max score for the entire board is 10 points

Each post will have a max score of 5 points

• 5 points = if post is on topic and includes discussion of economic concepts, and is at least 150 words

• 1 – 4 point = if not on topic, not discussing economic concepts, or not 200 words

• 0 points = if not substantial at all (for example just saying something like: that’s a good point, I agree with you)

Warning:

The point of having discussion boards it help you make sense, and relate to the material. For this reason you are not permitted to copy content from the internet (unless is a quote that you attribute to someone) and you are not permitted to use artificial intelligence programs (like chatGPT) to write your responses. An AI detection program will be used to identify violators, along with my own reviews. If you are suspected of using AI to write a post, you will be required to have a live zoom meeting with me, where I can ask you some follow up questions to determine if the knowledge expressed is your own, and if you should receive points or a zero.

Passing off AI words as your own is a form of academic dishonesty. As explained in the syllabus, the first instance of academic dishonesty on discussion boards will result in a zero for the assignment, and a second instance will result in a failing grade and a mark of academic dishonesty on your transcript.

Discussion Question: high income vs low income nations

We have started to investigate the question of why have some nations seen lots of growth and now have high levels of GDP per capita, while other nations are still struggling and still have very low levels of GDP per capita. Macroeconomics points out the key difference is productivity, which comes from differences in the factors of production, which themselves come from differences in incentives cause by differences in institutions. Let’s take that insight and look at some nations that are considered high income and some that are considered low income, and try to figure out what’s going on.

The World Bank publishes their data on GDP per capita for nearly every country ( a couple of countries don’t have data). You can see the data here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.C… .

Go to the section labeled “All countries and economies” and sort by “most recent value”

I want you to pick a high income nation which we will define as in the top 20% of countries (given this data that would be with GDP per capita above $30,000 in the latest year published), or a low income nation which we will define as in the bottom 20% of the countries (given this data that would be one with a GDP per capita below $2,000 in the latest year published).

Then do a little of your own research and try to offer a brief economic based explanation as to why your high income country has been able to achieve it’s high GDP per capita level, or why your low income country has been stuck at its low GDP per capita level. Be sure to use the economic insights described above (by that I mean look at factors of production, incentives, and institutions, and see how they are affecting the productivity in the nation).

Here are 2 sites where you can research different nations. Feel free to use any other source you want.

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/ – select your country of interest and then scroll down the next page to “contents” and look at “economy”

https://www.heritage.org/index/ search for your nation or pick from list or map

Requirements: 200 words