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...

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...

Starting in Spain in the twelfth century, parliaments gradually spread over the Latin West. The paper quantifies the activity of medieval and early-modern parliaments, which also makes it possible to analyse the influence of this institutional innovation. In the early-modern period parliaments...

Finland and New Zealand share many geographic, demographic and economic similarities. Their telecommunications markets also demonstrate many similarities; but behind these superficial similarities lie important structural differences that influence market performance. By tracing the evolutionary...

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 study from Madagascar exploits local variation in the timing and organization of colonial settlement and missionary education to distinguish long-run effects of colonial institutions and human capital. Results indicate that only colonial institutions had robust impacts on local economic...

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

This article aims to begin to fill a gap in the literature by offering a comprehensive critique of Douglass North’s work with emphasis on his historical studies. After a brief overview of his theoretical contributions, a closer scrutiny of his theory in its application to history is...

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,...