Africa’s interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

Using a natural experiment from Germany, we show that temporary place-based subsidies generate persistent effects on economic density. We identify employment and capital formation as main channels for higher income per square kilometer. As the spatial regression discontinuity design allows us to...

Although decision processes at the EU level are highly complex and often require unanimity, explicit side payments among member states are unknown. However, logrolling and redistributive policies are substitutes. This paper considers the EU regional policy as a substitute for explicit side...

During this period marked by the effects of the current economic crisis, the structural funds play most important role in regional development. Each country of the Union, especially those in development they wish to reach the level of the developed world, so you must access the funds in order to...

Beyond years of schooling, educational content can play an important role in the process of economic development. Individuals' choices of educational content are often shaped by the political economy of government policies that determine the incentives to acquire various skills. We first present...

This paper offers the first systematic historical evidence on the role of a central actor in modern growth theory - the engineer. It collects cross-country and state level data on the labor share of engineers for the Americas, and county level data on engineering and patenting for the US during...

We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer...

In this paper we want to present, in a succinct and in a theoretically way, the possible relation between economic liberalization, human development and standard of living in the present society based, more than ever, on knowledge. It is known that economic liberalization is one of the phenomen...

In the present paper we analyse, from an epistemological standpoint, the phases of economic and social development in Alvin Toffler’s perspective. In his works, he analyses economy and society at three distinct levels, which he calls “waves”. In Toffler’s view, humankind passed through...

The effects of the financial crisis that began in 2007 are still being felt in the global economy. Despite the fact that its low point was apparently reached, the economic recovery will last long, with an economic growth below potential and a gradual decrease of unemployment over several years....