This paper provides an overview of the failure of Argentina to benefit long term from export led development in the early and middle decades of the last century. Despite being well positioned to take advantage of significant breakdowns in the international economic system Argentina largely...

This paper analyses the impact of population composition on long run economic development, by studying European migration to Argentina during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1914). I use an instrumental variables (IV) approach that assigns immigrants to counties by interacting two sources of...

Recognizing the need to formulate policy strategies for the changes it faces, Myanmar started a multifaceted reform process in 2011. But speeding up development requires a multipronged but more coherent strategy targeted at strong and resilient growth, employment generation and, ultimately,...

The paper analyses the enigmatic high growth in Ethiopia from 2004 to 2015 (10.9% p.a.) and gauges the prospects for the future. In 2000, Ethiopia was the poorest country on the globe in per capita GDP - a mere 124 USD in current prices. The main finding is that the take-off was driven by...

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...

We aim to understand the key factors that explain the growth of a competitive and dynamic informal industrial sector in the major East Asian countries by looking at the historical developmental context as well as the industrial policy adopted by these countries. The paper also compares the...

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...

This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before entering a period of premature deindustrialization....