In this article, we investigate the relevance of structural change in country-wide productivity growth considering within-country differences. For this purpose, we propose a two-step decomposition approach that accounts for differences among subnational units. To highlight the relevance of our...

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...

An important stylized fact about African economic development is the phenomenon of urbanization without structural transformation. This paper provides a political economy analysis of the lack of structural transformation in African cities, drawing on the Deals and Development framework. It...

We investigate structural change in the PR China during a period of particularly rapid growth 1998-2014. For this, we utilize sectoral data from the World Input-Output Database and firm-level data from the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database. Starting with correlation laws known from the...

We investigate structural change in the PR China during a period of particularly rapid growth 1998-2014. For this, we utilize sectoral data from the World Input-Output Database and firm-level data from the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database. Starting with correlation laws known from the...

The ability to adjust to structural change is vital to economic development, and entries can be active participants in this process. This paper aims to shed some light on the relation between entrepreneurship and growth by arguing that entrepreneurial activity relates to growth via reallocation...

Using census-type data of Hungarian firms, we test the Marshall-Arrow-Romer (MAR) hypothesis on the impact of agglomeration economies on regional economic growth. The results suggest that MAR type of local knowledge externalities have a significant positive impact on TFP growth. However, initial...

Although industry clusters are major targets of regional economic development in less developed regions as well, we still need a deeper understanding on how spatial clustering of firms generates dynamics in lagging regions. These latter environments may differ too much from those typical cluster...

We analyze investment decisions when information is costly, with and without delegation to an agent. We use a rational-inattention model and compare it with a canonical signal-extraction model. We identify three "investment conditions". In "sour" conditions, no information is acquired and no...

Prior to the early part of the 19th century, China’s economy had long been superior to that of the West’s. The Chinese’s ability to utilize science and technology had been instrumental in leading their enormous population to economic prosperity and for a while, superiority. During the 18th...