The performance of Indian railways in the nineteenth century provides a great context to study the effects of state ownership on productivity and other aspects of firm operations. We rely on a key feature of the institutional background whereby the colonial Government of India purchased a...

This paper discusses the progress in transition to knowledge-based economy in Saudi Arabia. As for the methodology, this paper uses updated secondary data obtained from different sources. It uses both descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the OECD definition of knowledge-based economy...

This paper investigates micro and macro determinants of firms' investment behaviour using firm data from 101 developing and emerging economies. A substantial number of firms in our sample does not invest in fixed capital or invests little relative to sales revenue. Using a multilevel probit...

This paper provides an overview of knowledge transfer and explains the factors that enable or impede absorption capacity and knowledge transfer in the MENA countries, with particular reference to the case of Egypt. We employ the conceptual framework used in the international literature on...

This paper uses the descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the OECD 1996 definition of knowledge-based economy, the World Bank Knowledge Index and Knowledge Economy Index and other indicators to examine progress and challenges in transition to knowledge-based economies in Arab Gulf...

The history of debt relief is now particularly long, the associated costs are soaring and the outcomes are at least uncertain. This paper reviews and provides new evidence on the effects of recent debt relief programs on different macroeconomic indicators in developing countries, focusing on the...

It is well-known that the extent of credit lent to private agents differs widely between countries. The `financial deepening' of the economy offers opportunities as well as financial risks. This study investigates the extent to which institutional characteristics are re- lated to countries'...

Studies of the relationship between FDI and domestic investment levels reach contradictory findings. We revisit this empirical relationship and argue that some of the conflicting evidence may be explained by the use of poor proxies for the true underlying variables and by questionable...

In this paper we analyse economic development through the lenses of a newly developed index the structural modernization index. This index combines two dimensions that have been widely invoked as prime drivers of economic development namely, structural change and technological catch up. For each...