Do multinational enterprises act in developing countries as a motive force for progress or do they perpetuate colonialism by different means? The fierce controversy on this question still continues, fuelled not only by basic ideological differences but by dearth of empirical evidence. Prof....

The demand for control over transnational corporations forms part of the demands for a New International Economic Order. The statements about the question of effective means of control are however so far vague and in the context of the demands for a New Economic Order even contradictory. Until...

For the sake of less developed countries, it is time to adjust the discourses of international development assistance on poverty reduction. This article attempts to do so by reviewing new and old literature explaining why some countries are rich and others are poor. History has repeatedly shown...

This paper discusses the recent literature on the role of the state in economic development. It concludes that government incentives to enact sound policies are key to economic success. It also discusses the evidence on what happens after episodes of economic and political liberalizations,...

Empirical research on the determinants of international migration including the LDCs has so far neglected one important issue: the complex relationship of development and migration. Since the beginning of the 1990s several arguments have been discussed which hint at the possibility that progress...

The issue of poverty traps is assessed using quantile regression. For that an augmentation of the usual convergence regressions by quadratic and cubic terms is used with emphasis on curve fitting rather than parameter estimation. The results show that the generic mechanism leading to poverty...

Interest in biofuels is growing worldwide as concerns about the security of energy supply and climate change are moving into the focus of policy makers. With the exception of bioethanol from Brazil, however, production costs of biofuels are typically much higher than those of fossil fuels.As a...

The Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zones) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic...