A large share of cross-country differences in productivity is explained by differences in agricultural productivity. Using a combination of sub-national agricultural statistics and geospatial datasets on crop-specific potential yields, we study the main drivers of this variation from a...

In this paper, we review the different definitions of resilience and their potential application in explaining the long-term development of urban and regional economies. We reject equilibrist versions of resilience and argue instead that we should seek an understanding of the concept from an...

Roads play a central role in rural development, yet little is known about the size and distribution of benefits from such investments. This paper develops a method for estimating household-level benefits from road projects using the relationship between the value of farmland and its distance to...

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...

This paper aims to indicate that an economic recovery of the European economy can be pulled by an increase of the aggregate demand and by the adoption of a new European cohesion policy having an industrial and a territorial dimension. The paper illustrates a theoretical model: the model of the...

Purpose The present paper aims to highlight how manufacturing expansions under conditions of increasing returns, which involve the growth of intermediate goods specializations, support advanced service employment. In addition, the increasing use of manufacturing products in services highlights...

Recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross-country differences in income levels and growth rates. This paper makes two contributions. First, it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to...

We provide the first evidence that low- and middle-income countries with high education levels were more successful in developing comparative advantage in products unrelated to those they already export. In contrast, controlling for the relatedness of target products to these countries' exports,...

This research suggests that the evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played a significant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality within and across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonically in the course of human history....

A growth model with endogenous innovation and accumulation of high-tech and low-tech human capital is developed. The model accounts for a recently established fact about human capital composition, which stated that the richest countries are investing proportionally less than middle income...