This paper explores Southeast Asia's trade performance over the four and a half centuries from 1500 to 1940. It identifies the determinants of the commodity export performance – falling trade costs, income growth of its trading partners, and improved supply conditions at home. It also explores...

This paper studies the role of internal migration in income convergence across regions in Japan. Neoclassical theory predicts that migration should have been an important source of convergence, but regression results suggest otherwise. The paper investigates the possibility that this discrepancy...

The Paper studies determinants of internal migration in Russia. Using panel data on gross region-to-region migration flows in 1992-99, we estimate the effect of economic, political and social factors. Although overall migration is rather low, it turns out that its intensity does depend on...

We study barriers to labor mobility using panel data on gross region-to-region migration flows in Russia for 1995-2010. We find that barriers that hindered internal migration in 1990s have been generally eliminated by the end of 2000s. In 1990s many poor Russian regions were in poverty traps:...

This paper studies the role of strong versus weak ties in the rural-to-urban migration decision in China. We first develop a network model that puts forward the different roles of weak and strong ties in helping workers to migrate to the city. We then use a unique longitudinal data that allows...

In this Paper we aim to examine the regional impact of foreign-owned establishments on the performance of domestic establishments in the electronics industry in the UK. We use establishment-level data taken from the UK Census of Production (the ARD) to this end. In the econometric specification,...

Major economic transitions, even when they are disruptive, do not occur instantaneously but rather occur over time, as regions within a country change at different rates. Accordingly, these dynamics may be reflected in a geographic lifecycle with different regions characterized by different...

Regions can benefit by offering infrastructure services that are differentiated by quality, thus segmenting the market for industrial location. Regions that compete on infrastructure quality have an incentive to increase the degree of differentiation between them. This places an upper bound on...

Despite massive regional policy efforts, GDP per capita in Southern Italy has only briefly converged on Northern Italian levels (during the 1960s). Failure since then is associated with a policy switch from investment towards income maintenance, with reduced wage sensitivity to regional labour...

This Paper studies the welfare implications of the location decisions of innovative newcomers that, though spinning off an industrial district, may choose whether to locate inside or outside its borders. Even if this choice has always been relevant, globalization has turned the issue, whether to...