The two lists speak for themselves; in 2006 the average GDP for the “always open” group was $17,521, as opposed to $2,362 for the “always closed” group. Sachs and his colleagues next looked at the effect of trade policy on the ability of a nation to join the “convergence club” of the world’s prosperous economies.16 This time, they examined the relationship in both developed and developing nations between per capita GDP in 1970 and growth rates over the next twenty years. They found that free-trading nations had very high growth rates.
