This article describes the development of international trade blocs world wide from the 1950s till 2010. We updated the data on international trade flows and introduced a new trade bloc variable based on the intramax hierarchical clustering technique, which defines trade blocs on actual trade...

Innovation and technological progress are the key determinants of long-run economic growth and welfare. Therefore, an important question is, how can public policy encourage more innovation? In this chapter, I review some of the empirical findings from various recent studies on innovation and...