The scholarship on Global Value Chains is very recently recognising the increasing importance of fragmentation of production that involves services – and in particular business services – offshoring. A predominant stand by scholars emerges in this embryonic domain (Blinder, 2006; Gereffi and...

This paper examines the income inequality implications of a 'premature deindustrialization' trend in middle-income countries. To identify the premature deindustrialization phase, we arrive at five conditions based on the trends in employment and value-added share of manufacture. Among these five...

Insights from industrial organization, Schumpeterian innovation, and economic development theories are used to try to explain firm behavior in cases of successful acquisition of advanced technological assets and international trade competitiveness by Asian and Latin-American countries at an...

The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

This study investigates the effect of participative political institutions (PPIs) that emerged in many central European cities from the late 13th century. The empirical analysis of the paper is based on newly compiled long-run data for the existence of different types of PPIs in 104 cities in...

Developing countries became less hostile to transnational service corporations (TNSCs), but many still confine TNSCs to selected industries and specific market segments. Given that services, and especially producer services, are inputs into other industries, the unintended effect of restrictions...

Interventions designed to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are popular among policy makers, given the role SMEs play in job creation around the world. Business support interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often based on the assumption that market failures and...

Worldwide 600 million jobs are needed over the next 15 years to keep employment rates at their current level. Governments, non-governmental organizations and donors spend on targeted programs and broader policies to enhance employment creation and the creation of new firms. Because most...

Quantifying the economic effects of climate change is a crucial step for planning adaptation in developing countries. This study assesses the economy-wide and regional effects of climate change induced productivity and labor supply shocks in agriculture in Ethiopia. The study shows, in worst...