Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia's future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal's expectations, Asia's development has been remarkable, although...

Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama in 1968, a work which made important analytical contributions to our understanding of development but was deeply pessimistic about Asia's future prospects. Since then, contrary to Myrdal's expectations, Asia's development has been remarkable, although...

The task of economic planning in the new nation of Nigeria in the early 1960s tested the limits of economic technologies: its recipes for development, its possibilities of measurement, and from differences in political economy. These dimensions of the problem beset not only the Nigerian...

In the vast body of development theoretical knowledge one element has been of a considerable longevity: the abstraction of a Gross Domestic Product to represent a given economic entity. This paper suggests approaching the history of development thinking by traveling with the GDP through this...

What is the nature and extent of historical awareness in the development discourse? Does the development discourse learn from history, including its own? Set in the contexts of aging development institutions and a changing geopolitical climate, this paper provides one account through a...

Tax policy is among the most common and relevant instruments in the toolkit of policy-makers when thinking about promoting growth, yet there is not compelling evidence regarding its effect in Latin American countries. Using a variety of approaches, we estimate the effects on growth of the most...

This paper combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity. We show that information capacity contributes to the development of fiscal capacity. States require...

The state of anomie that has characterised and still characterises most Latin American countries, resulting from the fragmentation of the social fabric, has encouraged the rise of successful personalist leaderships in the '90s. This paper aims at investigating how neopopulism developed in Latin...

Tax policy is among the most common and relevant instruments in the toolkit of policy-makers when thinking about promoting growth, yet there is not compelling evidence regarding its effect in Latin American countries. Using a variety of approaches, we estimate the effects on growth of the most...

Railways were one of the main engines of the Latin American trade boom before 1914. Railway construction often required financial support from local governments, which depended on their fiscal capacity. But since the main government revenues were trade-related, this generated a two-way feedback...