Journal of Monetary Economics 53 (2006) 911–916 Discussion Comment on: ‘‘Globalization, returns to accumulation and the world distribution of output’’ Jonathan Eaton à New York University, NY 10003, USA Received 12 May 2006; accepted 30 May 2006 Available online 12 July 2006 1. Introduction Paul Beaudry and Fabrice Collard (BC) expose open economies as the culprits behind the ‘‘twin peaks,’’ the emerging bimodal cross-country distribution of income during 1978–1998. They attribute the phenomenon to greater openness interacting with a factor–market distortion. 2. Openness and growth: a look at the numbers How did the experience of individual countries contribute to BC’s finding? Tables 1 and 2 list the 75 countries reported in BC’s Appendix B. Sorting the countries by the openness measure for 1978, I created a group of 38 open and 37 closed economies. The tables report the openness measure (OPEN) and GDP per worker (YPW) in 1978 and 1998, and YPW in 1998 relative to its 1978 value (GROWTH). For each group, the countries appear in ascending order of 1978 YPW. I then divided each group into three subgroups with approximately equal numbers of members according to 1978 YPW. Table 3 reports the growth in GDP per worker and in the openness measure for each subgroup. Consistent with BC, among the open, income growth was higher among the rich than among the poor, with the opposite for the closed group. While growth was only slightly higher among the closed poor than among the open poor, removing the Tigers, Malaysia, ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/jme 0304-3932/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmoneco.2006.05.004 à Tel.: +1 212 998 8951; fax: +1 212 995 3932. E-mail address: jonathan.eaton@nyu.edu.