Economic Development Process: A Compartmental Analysis of a Macroeconomic Model

Economic growth and development have always been an interesting topic for economists. Since development is a dynamical process, we developed a new dynamical mathematical model describing the process of economic development. In this paper the compartmental approach, traditionally used in mathematical biology, is applied to built a macroeconomic model characterized by countries. Countries are divided into three classes based on their economic status: D(t) developing countries at time t, E(t) emerging countries at time t and A(t) advanced countries at time t. This minimalist model represents the different stage of development and encompasses the conditions under which a country can change its economic status. Numerical simulations on real economic data are provided in order to illustrate the theoretical part and to support discussion. On the other hand, a global sensitivity analysis is done to identify the factors that most influence the level of development of countries