A response to McElroy and Lucas

Abstract

This brief paper comments on McElroy’s Note, identifying one or two potential issues with its data and statistical method, but welcoming another contribution to the substantial body of islands scholarship that has appeared under McElroy’s name. An important emerging topic for research is whether two key groups of small island economies – those that are now sovereign states and those that are (still) now non-sovereign territories – have followed diverging or parallel development paths since decolonization. Some evidence is noted pointing in both directions, leaving a wide-open field for future research.

Keywords

• convergence
• decolonisation
• divergence
• small island economies
• political status