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....

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...

This chapter surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in...

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...

El best-seller de Ken Follett, Una fortuna peligrosa, además de los ingredientes habituales del género, contiene abundante información económica, al relatar la historia de un banco ficticio, pero cuyas operaciones y problemas son idénticos a los de los bancos reales, en una sucesión de...

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...

A birth certificate establishes a child's legal identity and age, but few quantitative estimates of the significance of birth registration exist. Birth registration laws were enacted by U.S. states in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using 1910–1930 census data, this study finds that minimum...

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,...