This paper argues that the single most important factor that explains East Asia's development success was its fast structural transformation toward industrialization, manufacturing in particular. Workers moved out of agriculture into manufacturing, and the sector diversified and upgraded its...

Becoming a rich country requires the ability to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 exported commodities according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the income content of the products exported); and (2) connectivity to other...

Becoming a rich country requires the ability to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 exported commodities according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the income content of the products exported); and (2) connectivity to other...

Prioritizing the growth of particular sectors or regions is often part of a low income country's growth strategy. We study a prototypical example of such policies in Ethiopia, exploiting geographic and sectoral variation in the form and scale of the policy for identification. Using product-level...

Modern economic development is accompanied by the structural transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Since the 18th century, all countries that industrialized successfully have followed their comparative advantages and leveraged the latecomer advantage, including emerging...

The management of revenues from exhaustible natural resources involves a number of challenges. In this paper, we argue that the standard policy advice to managers of resource revenues has been dominated by short-termism and the lack of a perspective on economic development and structural...

Hydrogen is a cross-cutting energy vector that can help to decarbonise various end-use sectors. At least two-thirds of the global hydrogen production is projected to be green hydrogen by 2050, supporting the transition to a net-zero emissions global energy system. This paper presents a value...

The machinery industry is a very difficult sector to develop in the short term. It is also not easy to drastically shorten the developmental period. Therefore, it is necessary for developing countries to thoroughly review Korea’s policy trends when designing machinery industry policies. This...

Green hydrogen, produced from water and renewable power through the electrolysis process, can play a crucial role in the low-carbon transition to achieve the net-zero emission targets. Currently, the production cost of green hydrogen is not competitive when compared to hydrogen produced from...

Although there exists a vast literature on convergence and divergence of income levels across countries or regions at the aggregate level, there is only little work on convergence and/or diver- gence processes of productivity and wage levels at the more disaggregated industrial level. These are...