Many observers suspect economic growth to be inextricably associated with inequality: growth alone need not bring about unalloyed, uncontroversial increases in economic well-being because rising average income levels might come together with increasing disparities between rich and poor....

Spatial concentration of economic activities is one of the most salient features of economic development. The almost parallel urge by policymakers to counteract such a trend through public polices is also striking. This is not only reserved to those countries, especially in Europe, which have a...

The EIB finances a large number of projects in support of EU policies including social and economic cohesion, that is to reduce regional disparities in income. Since 1995, the EIB Evaluation Department has looked at over 100 projects where the Bank has been involved, normally along the lines of...

In the last decade or so, growth has come to occupy an increasingly important place among the interests of macroeconomists, displacing to some extent their previous preoccupation with the business cycle. This change is largely due to two factors. The first one is the realisation that, in terms...

In a world of globalisation, it is tempting to foresee the 'death of distance' and, once the impediments to mobility have declined sufficiently, to wait for the predictions of the neo-classical theory of factor mobility to materialise. According to this theory, production factors respond to...

European policy makers may have asked too much from regional policies: to decrease inequalities between regions, to increase efficiency at the national and European levels and to decrease inequalities between countries. This paper argues that these policies face a trade-off between equity and...

Political opposition to technical change is not a new phenomenon; at the plant level, organised labour has often resisted implementation of new technologies, as is exemplified by the Luddites in the nineteenth century, the dockers' strikes against the use of containers in Britain in the early...

Changes in the role of collective action at the international level, in the international economic environment, and, most importantly, our better understanding of economics in general require that we rethink the role of international financial institutions (IFIs). For multilateral development...