Above all, knowledge diffusion depends on a country’s ability to mobilize financing as well as institutions that encourage large-scale investment in education and training of the population while guaranteeing a stable legal framework that various economic actors can reliably count on. It is therefore closely associated with the achievements of legitimate and efficient government. (…) poor countries catching up with wealthier countries is not a result of the latter investing in the former, but a result of poor countries investing in themselves.

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century