The papers in this special issue of the Annals were first presented at the Transportation and Economic Development Conference held in Little Rock, Arkansas in March of 2006. The conference was attended by officials from U.S. Department of Transportation agencies, academic scholars and industry...

During the second half of the 20th century Asia as a whole experienced a much higher increase in production per inhabitant than Africa, due to several factors which caused improvements in industrial development and moderation in the rates of population growth. We present a comparison, at area...

The Barbados economy is dynamic and internationally competitive, led by a private sector that demonstrates remarkable enterprise and innovation, from our largest and most successful firms to youth entrepreneurs of outstanding promise. But our public sector is living beyond its means and its low...

This paper focuses on the debt build-up that frontier low-income developing countries (LIDCs) have faced since 2012. First, it documents a 20-percentage point increase in the external and government debt-to-GDP ratios, a composition shift toward higher non-concessional debt, and a rise in...

The ability of the mass media to process and store information, which is one of the most fundamental concepts that the IV Industrial Revolution has made, as well as the modern information society, has the advantage of enhancing globalization and the spread of human relations globally....

The new growth literature, using both endogenous growth and neoclassical models, has generated strong claims for the effect of national policies on economic growth. Empirical work on policies and growth has tended to confirm these claims. This paper casts doubt on this claim for strong effects...

This paper examines the link between foreign aid and the composition of government spending in aid-recipient countries. Two questions are addressed: (i) does foreign aid crowd out government spending in aid-recipient countries, and (ii) does the degree of fungibility vary across different...

We examine how entrepreneurship and institutional and policy reforms affect development (proxied by the rate of growth in per–capita income). We do so by performing Arellano-Bond GMM estimations on annual data for a large group of developing and developed countries, and covering the period...

Tunisia's recent growth and development performance relative to countries in its region, and relative to countries at similar levels of development in other parts of the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been notable. An analysis of Tunisia's path to development reveals that the...