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more similar than the group of économies initially picked on the basis of their
structural similarity (see Tables 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5). Generally ali of the peer
économies had, like Cyprus, large but declining agricultural sectors in 1960, small
but growing industriai sectors and large but still rapidly expanding service sectors.
The Micro-Economies are however, unsurprisingly, the most similarly open to
international trade, measuring total imports and exports as a percentage of national
income (variable 8). Simply because of their limited resource base, they would be
expected to be very open to international trade as they are wholly dépendent on
trade for their survival. A low coefficient of variation for the eighth variable must
therefore reflect structure, and in this case size rather than policy, a factor which
also contributes to the even closer corrélations in the contribution of the service
sector, partly a function of size and perhaps increasingly location rather than simply
policy or stage of development. Cyprus finds itself exactly in the middle of all
eleven économies in terms of openness to international trade in the 1951-60 period.
Essentially it is located at the bottom of the Micro Economies scale and at the top
end of the MDM économies (see Figures 6.10 and 6.19).
The divergence in the government share of national income in 1960 (Table 6.3,
variable 9) is greatest for the Micro Economies and lowest for the Regional Subgroup,
though the différence between the latter and the World Bank's MDM is far
from being statistically significant. A significant convergence in this indicator for
the Micro Economies and the Regional Sub-Group (Table 6.4) would imply that
both groups were likely to benefit or suffer from similar policy influences. The
Regional Sub-Group converges from an average government share of GDP in 1960
of 19% to 16% in 1980. With the Micro Economies, however, convergence is in
the other direction, more rather than less government with the average government
share of GDP rising from 14% in 1960 to 16% in 1980. As expected, Israel and
Turkey's divergence from the norm contributes to the divergence of the "More
Developed Mediterranean" économies between 1960 and 1980 (Table 6.3 and 6.4) .
Again as expected, Israel's government share of GDP is at the far end of the
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