Proponents of the theory of unequal exchange claim that the international division of labour is based on the exploitation of the developing countries by the industrialised countries. But the international division of labour allows the developing countries to import goods which they either could...

We study the distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, across 250,000 grid cells of average area 560 square kilometers. We first document that nearly half of the variation can be explained by a parsimonious set of physical geography attributes. A full set of country...