The extinction of genetic resources as a consequence of land development, especially in ‘biodiversity hot spots’like rain forests in South America or South East Asia, is becoming a serious problem - not only for local communitiesbut also for international firms in the pharmaceutical...

We discuss political economy mechanisms which can explain the resource curse,in which an increase in the size of resource rents causes a decrease in the economy’stotal value added. We identify a number of channels through which resource rentswill alter the incentives of a political leader....

The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order wherebythe landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values between a...

Using structural VARs, I find that external shocks are an important source of macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets. Furthermore, U.S. monetary policy shocks affect quickly and strongly interest rates and the exchange rate in a typical emerging market. The price level and real output in...

We decompose by origin the sources of the variation in real aggregate output and aggregate price level in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. We find that a sizable fraction of the variation is attributable to external shocks, especially so for aggregate price level. We show that euroarea...

This paper analyzes optimal foreign aid policy in a neoclassical frameworkwith a conflict of interest between the donor and the recipient government.Aid conditionality is modelled as a limited enforceable contract. We defineconditional aid policy to be self-enforcing if, at any point in time,...

Does fractionalization change over time? If so, are there any substantial implications foreconomic performance? To answer such questions, we construct a new panel data set withfractionalization measures for 26 former communist countries covering the period from 1989to 2002...

The paper provides an outline of the concept of regional growth regimes andempirically illustrates the relevance of the concept. The empirical examples areentrepreneurship, entry and the performance of new businesses in East andWest Germany. The differences of the factors determining the...

Der Beitrag behandelt den Einfluss des Gründungsgeschehens auf die regionale Entwicklung. Viele dieser Wirkungen sind indirekter Natur und müssen sich nicht notwendig in der Region niederschlagen, in der die Gründung stattfand. Empirische Analysen für westdeutsche Regionen zeigen, dass nur...

Questioning the underlying assumptions of the process of creative destruction, weconceptualize an alternative process of creative construction that may characterizethe dynamics between entrants and incumbents. We discuss the underlyingmechanism of knowledge spillover strategic entrepreneurship...