The basic theme underlying this paper is qualitative change taking place during economic development. These changes in the composition of the economic system should become one of the most important variables in models of economic growth and development. Our knowledge of the relationship between...

Naval counter-piracy measures off Somalia have failed to change the incentives for pirates, raising calls for land-based approaches that may involve replacing piracy as a source of income. This paper evaluates the effects of piracy on the Somali economy to establish which (domestic) groups...

This article challenges claims that liberalising state regulated markets in developing countries may induce lasting economic development. The analysis of the rise of tourism in Egypt during the last three decades suggests that the effects of liberalisation and structural adjustment are...

When comparing the speed and extent of economic development in different geographic regions of the world over the past 20 years, the under-average performance of Arab countries in general and Arab Mediterranean countries in particular is striking. This is despite an overall favorable...

We claim that a sequential mechanism linking history to development exists: first, history defines the quality of social capital; then, social capital determines the level of corruption; finally, corruption affects economic performance. We test this hypothesis on a dataset of Italian provinces,...

Cluster policy has become a method of choice for policymakers in many countries. Promoting strong localized industries is an appealing perspective for practitioners, as it can be seen as a way to anchor economic activity in regions in an era of globalization. If cluster policy is successful, it...

Since the mid-1980s a substantial body of research has taken shape on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the WTO or regional trade agreements, especially the EU. However, an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of unilateral services sector liberalization. The literature...

This paper studies the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis in two areas with strong differences in economic development, sixteen OECD countries and sixteen Latin American economies. Applying panel cointegration and bootstrapping techniques that solve for cross-sectional dependence problems in the data,...

The main focus of this paper is the question if the success of regional integration organisation in developing countries is, in fact, dependent on factors like similarity of their economic structure, market size or lack of committment. It is shown that there are also other more important...

The paper deals with the connection between politically induced catch-up development, cultural and intellectual traditions and economic order in Germany and Russia. It is argued that in the history of both countries we encounter significant structural parallels, including the totalitarian...