Nearly ten years since the official launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an understanding of what the initiative's objectives are consolidated. However, the short-, mid-, and long-term implications of the initiative are less clear. This is reflected in academic research, as well as in...

We propose a simple-to-implement dynamic panel data method to evaluate the impacts of place-based policies. The idea is to exploit both the cross sectional dependence and the serial correlation within a panel and implement a semi difference-in-difference decomposition. Different from the method...

African countries have sought to replicate the success of East Asia by implementing special economic zones. Despite decades of international experience, there remains no blueprint for successful special economic zone policies, and the majority of special economic zones fall well below...

Industrialization is regarded as the prime indicator of development. Since political independence, India is striving hard to build a strong industrial base. India inherited a weak industrial foundation as British’s neglected India’s industrialization. India did get her first jute mill as...

Industrialization is regarded as the prime indicator of development. Since political independence, India is striving hard to build a strong industrial base. India inherited a weak industrial foundation as British’s neglected India’s industrialization. India did get her first jute mill as...

Chinese city-level data indicate that differences in growth rates are far more severe than indicated in previous studies which typically use data at higher levels of aggregation. We estimate growth equations using city-level data and find that the policy of awarding a special economic zone...

Special economic zones (SEZ), one of the most important instruments of industrial policy used in developing countries, often impose export share requirements (ESR). That is, firms located in SEZ are required to export more than a certain share of their output to enjoy a wide array of incentives...