The 1980s have seen the beginnings of a change of heart among developing country policymakers, as the import-substitution consensus of the previous decade has all but evaporated. It is paradoxical that the 1980s should have become the decade of trade liberalization in LDCs, since this has also...

This paper investigates how telecommunications infrastructure affects economic growth. This issue is important and has received considerable attention in the popular press concerning the creation of the 'information superhighway' and its potential impacts on the economy. We use evidence from 21...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

Price volatility, reflecting the ability to absorb exogenous supply- or demand shocks, is an important dimension of market performance. In this paper we present a model to study the factors determining the price volatility of markets of basic foodstuffs in pre industrial societies. This model is...

The contrasting tariff regimes of Northern and Southern Ireland after 1932 must have influenced industrial structure and specialization. Can a comparison of Northern and Southern data from the 1960s, just before the South began to opt for trade liberalization again, 'reveal' the damage done by...

This Paper argues that a geographical perspective is fundamental to understanding comparative economic development in the context of globalization. Central to this view is the role of agglomeration in productivity performance; size and location matter. The tools of the new economic geography are...

This paper uses a unique database that provides value-added, employment, and population levels for the entire set of French departments for the years 1860, 1930, and 2000. These data cover three sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, and services. This allows us to study the evolution of spatial...

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...

Africa and Latin America secured their independence from European colonial rule a century and half apart: most of Latin America after 1820 and most of Africa after 1960. Despite the distance in time and space, they share important similarities. In each case independence was followed by political...