The article aims to present and discuss estimates of levels of human and social capital in Italy's regions over the long term, i.e. roughly from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the present day.  The results are linked to newly available evidence for regional value added in order...

This paper provides a critical view of the cross country literature on the impact of labour market institutions and policies on the evolving pattern of unemployment in OECD countries. Such widely used indicators as the generosity of unemployment insurance or the strength of trade unions are...

The move to a more market-oriented economy is associated with evidence of increased inequality in the incomes earned by men and women. The context of our study of this question is the recent large-scale reform of the inefficient state sector, which has caused layoffs of urban workers that...

This study analyses behaviour of women community based organisations in two districts in Nepal in reducing prevalence of child malnutrition in member households. Our survey focused on three sets of women organisations: those that receive intensive external support are compared with those that...

Drawing insights from the literature on credit and labor markets and from the author`s own survey work on contractual practices among manufacturers and traders in Africa, this paper investigates the spontaneous emergence of markets in the presence of heterogeneous agents. Using a dynamic game...

The purpose of this paper is to reflect, from an economist`s point of view, on the methodological issues raised by the study of social capital. This term has been used in many different ways to cover a broad range of phenomena (Durlauf & Fafchamps 2002). Perhaps it is best seen as a way of...

Social capital is thought to play an economic role in the labour market. It may be particularly pertinent in one that is in transition from an administered to a market-oriented system. One factor that may determine success in the underdeveloped Chinese labour market is thus guanxi, the Chinese...

The evidence that earnings rise with firm size and that human capital affects earnings based on labour market data are two of the most robust empirical findings in economics. In contrast the evidence for scale economies in firm data is very weak. The limited direct evidence of human capital on...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as...

Three dimensions of the performance of firms in Ghana’s manufacturing sector are investigated in this paper: their technology and the importance of technical and allocative efficiency. We show that the diversity of factor choices in not due to a non-homothetic technology. Observable...