Currently, global value chains (GVCs) are increasingly shaping the global economy, covering a growing share of international trade, GDP, and employment globally. Global trade is impacted by the emergence of GVCs in areas as diverse as commodities, electronics, and business service outsourcing,...

Policymakers increasingly view China’s rapidly growing wealth as a threat. China currently ranks second, or perhaps even first, in the world in gross domestic product (although 78th in per capita GDP), and the fear is that China will acquire military prowess commensurate with its wealth and...

More than 170 years ago, Frédéric Bastiat noted in his masterly work Economic Sophisms that the “opposition to free trade rests upon errors, or, if you prefer, upon half-truths.”1 Ever since Adam Smith successfully replaced mercantilist orthodoxy with free trade doctrine in his celebrated...

In this paper, we provide a new methodology in constant-market-shares (CMS) analysis and the measurement of export competitiveness. The main issue in CMS analysis is the difficulty in reconciling the continuously changing nature of country and world exports with the available discrete time data...

This paper provides new evidence of the effects of road construction on both domestic and international trade flows in the People's Republic of China (PRC) using customs data and information on transport investments in the region, including those supported by multilateral development banks. We...

Sustainable use of natural resources becomes an important issue today not only due to global warming and pollution issues but also because of critical pressure on the Earth's regeneration possibility. We cannot use classical microeconomic approach here for two reasons: a) impossibility to create...

This paper contributes to the understanding of the long-run consequences of Roman rule on economic development. In ancient times, the area of contemporary Germany was divided into a Roman and non-Roman part. The study uses this division to test whether the formerly Roman part of Germany show a...

This paper analyzes the growth of Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the PRC between 1992 and 2013 by focusing on the night-light radiance — a measure of economic activity — of connected subcity places that we refer to as a natural city. This paper documents the rapid growth of natural cities...

This paper contributes to the understanding of the long-run consequences of Roman rule on economic development. In ancient times, the area of contemporary Germany was divided into a Roman and non-Roman part. The study uses this division to test whether the formerly Roman part of Germany show a...

Transport infrastructure is viewed as an important determinant of regional growth and development. While this prediction especially holds from a theoretical perspective based on endogenous growth theories, from an empirical perspective it is not easy to verify this causal link, though. The main...