This article uses the global value chain approach to analyse the upgrading trajectories of leading apparel exporters adapting to the end of textile and apparel quotas and the economic recession. These events have been coupled by the consolidation and reconfiguration of global supply chains....

In the last decade, there has been an increasing recognition among Central American policy makers of the central importance of science, technology and innovation (STI) for inclusive and sustainable economic growth, based on higher productivity. This paper aims to study current STI policies in...

This paper demonstrates that the current economic crisis has its roots in the evolution of the global economy during the 1960s. The gradual increase of US debt from the 1960s accompanied by the deficit in the US trade balance due to international competition from EU, Japan, and later from China...

European monetary history prior to 1950 presents many attempts at international monetary coordination, but none were as bold and as far reaching as the European Monetary Union envisioned in the Delors Report of 1989 and enacted through the 1991 Treaty on the European Union in Maastricht. This...

Building on the view that financial systems from contract and trading structures through regulation are artifacts of law and politics, this paper analyzes the fundamental reasons for the observed hierarchy in all financial systems. Why are financial systems hierarchical? The answer offered here...

This article argues that, by appealing to technological factors, one can compare different innovations, even different economies, over time. An application is made to the development of steam engines and turbines over their history from 1700 to 2000, for which it is shown that four types of...

The so-called “sailing ship effect” has often been stated as though there is no doubt that it really took place in the end of the 19th century. The notion has, moreover, been used as a stylised fact that is in charge of conveying the idea that the substitution threat of new radical...

Contribution to the panel session at the Hoover Institution conference on “Frameworks for Monetary Policy for the Next Century,” May 30, 2014.

In this letter, Rossi-Doria summarises the stages of his journey and expresses a general judgment of his experience. He is convinced that American agriculture has peculiar characteristics and can hardly constitute a model for Italy. Cultural exchanges are held essential to promote development,...

Travelling from the Usa to Italy, Rossi-Doria describes the impressions of his second visit to America. Rossi-Doria writes that he had this time a deeper and surer understanding of this big Country. On this occasion, in fact, he came into contact with American society, with the everyday life,...