Unlike in Asia, the manufacturing sector has not (yet) become a driver of structural change in Africa. One common explanation is that the natural resource-focus of many African economies leads to Dutch disease effects. To test this argument for the case of newly found oil in Ghana we develop a...

“Desert Power 2050” is probably the world’s most ambitious strategy report towards the decarbonization of the power sector in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EUMENA). The report inspired by the Desertec vision aims at providing clean energy from MENA’s desert regions to the...

This paper extends choice theory by allowing for the interaction between cognitive costs and social norms. The authors experimentally investigate the role of imitation and temporal decisional patterns when participants face a task which is costly in cognitive terms. They identify two main...

This paper analyzes, within a regional growth model, the impact of productive governmental policy and integration on the spatial distribution of economic activity. Integration is understood as enhancing territorial cooperation between the regions, and it describes the extent to which one region...

Nanotechnologies are expected to be the dominant general purpose technology of the next decades. Their market potential is immense and especially demand side arguments will have far reaching consequences for innovations. They may occur as increased miniaturization or via building completely new...

Large-scale agricultural land acquisitions might entail substantial welfare implications for the affected rural population. Whether the impacts are indeed as devastating as the popular notion of "land grabs" would suggest depends on a number of factors, including the size of compensation...

The recent empirical literature on economic sustainability of certified export crops shows that certification standards that enhance yields are important for improving farm revenues and farmer welfare. However, limited evidence exists on the impact of organic certification on the adoption of...

We estimate the impact of climate change on agricultural production in a panel of 127 countries from 1961 to 2002. In contrast to the existing literature we account for cross-sectional dependence and technology heterogeneity. We find no significant impact of climate change on agricultural...

Global food markets demand the adoption of food standards by small-scale farmers in developing countries when they enter international markets. While a conventional certification with GlobalGAP can be a market entry condition for conventional food, especially for horticultural products, organic...

This paper presents a modeling comparison project on how the 2°C climate target could affect economic and energy systems development in China and India. The analysis uses a framework that harmonizes baseline developments and soft-links seven national and global models being either economy wide...