By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly...

We analyse a world economy composed of a continuum of small countries producing two final goods, the learning-by-doing potentials of which differ significantly. In autarchy, the knowledge accumulated in the high-learning sector spills over into the low-learning one. A steady-state equilibrium...