This Handbook brings together a range of viewpoints on a number of the burning issues affecting urban sustainability in North America and Europe at the beginning of the 21st century. H.S. Geyer and his contributors cover a wide spectrum of the urban policy issues that determine the growth and...

What can microfinance contribute to the creation of employment and the increase in well-being of the population? We argue that microfinance has an important benefit for the poor, particularly for subsistence entrepreneurs, as a means of handling shocks and smoothing income. By helping to assure...

"Do firms in developing countries shift trade towards developed economies as a result of high economic growth? The matched customs-manufacturing firm data used in this study confront this hypothesized link with empirical evidence. Our analysis reveals a rising low-income country trade share...

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties, which are subject to imperfectly correlated shocks. As in endogenous growth models,...

This paper endeavours to provide a comprehensive analysis of the nature and the possible importance of “global excess liquidity”, a concept which has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we present some conceptual discussion on...