Why are we rich and others poor? What is preventing the less-developed countries from catching up with the more developed? How did we become rich? Underlying these questions are more fundamental ones: What is the nature of economic progress? What are its causes? I seek the answers to these...

This paper argues that the role of international trade and the institutions that promote the raging process of economic globalization is more likely to be debilitating for developing countries that are not well positioned to benefit from it. It argues that because the globalization process has...

Many argue that elements of a society's norms, culture or social capital are central to understanding its development. However, these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models. Here, we argue that trustworthiness is the economically relevant component of a society's culture and,...

Purpose The entire world is now witnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is indeed altering the lives of the many in both developing and developed countries. Massive digital transformations are affecting the economies of those countries and are bringing with...

Understanding the primary causes of human prosperity is one of the most important endeavors of social scientists. Much research in the 20th century followed a neo-classical approach which emphasized important factors such as physical capital, human capital, and technological change, but was...

The impact of information technology (IT) on globalization of the world market is assumed to have a dual economic effect. From the micro-economic standpoint, an integrative business model has been proposed using qualitative and quantitative frameworks, and several constraints have been found...

Economic development theories and their learning frameworks differently address farms and firms. This article argues that the traditional double-standard of the primacy of manufacturing rests on a debatable stages model that under-recognizes learning and innovation in agriculture and its...

I reconsider the primacy of institutions over geography as an explanatory factor of cross-country differences in economic performance, which has recently been postulated by Acemoglu et al. (2001) and others. My estimates show that the reported missing direct performance effects of a measure of...

In this paper, I discuss the reasons for Costa Rica's economic performance over the last quarter of a century. Three complementary sets of policies (investments in human capital, careful stabilization, and an intelligent and aggressive integration into the world economy) explain the successful...

Paper reviews India's growth performance since independence. Phrases suchas "Hindu Rate of Growth," sometimes make a telling comment and expose obscureeconomic data to a wider audience, but they can just as readily obscure reality byfocussing attention on the wrong issue. There is nothing in the...