We exploit employment data from 10,528 parishes across nineteenth century England and Wales and find that a one standard deviation increase in finance employment increases the annualized growth rate of secondary labour by 0.8 percentage points. An endogenous growth model with finance and...

The industrial sector is responsible for roughly one quarter of global greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. To align sector pathway developments with overarching net-zero transition goals in different industries, governments are required to understand sectoral reduction potentials to efficiently...

A national-champions-related industrial policy has become (again) en vogue among European politicians. Against this background, our work orders different types of national champions along the industry lifecycle. Different types of locally bound externalities appear along the lifecycle. In a...

The debate on trade and growth increasingly focuses on the composition of exports. Exports of more “sophisticated” products appear to be positively correlated with growth, and upgrading the quality of exports is high on the policy agenda of many countries. This study presents evidence...

Economic activity tends to cluster. This results in productivity gains. For policy makers this offers an opportunity to formulate and promote policies that foster clustering of economic activity. Paradoxically, although agglomeration rents are often found in empirical research a rationale for...

Industrial policies are widely credited with upgrading the economic structure of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and advancing its economy towards and beyond the current technological frontier. Yet the data suggest that the PRC's economy-wide investment patterns—with investment embodying...