This paper develops a new international monetary framework for analysing the domestic and international repercussions of China’s exchange rate policy in the context of its rapid development. This straightforward framework reveals that misalignment of the yuan against major currencies...

We present a semi-endogenous model of regional growth and development without scale effects. In this model of a small developing region the world growth rate of technical progress is given. Regional growth is driven by technological change induced by imitation. Imitation is determined by...

We study the connection between economic performance and the quality of government institutions for the sample of 103 Italian NUTS3 regions, including new measures of institutional quality calculated using data on the provision of four areas of public service: health, educational...

We advance the hypothesis that cultural values such as high work ethics and thrift, “the Protestant ethic” according to Max Weber, may have been diffused long before the Reformation, thereby importantly affecting the pre-industrial growth record. The source of pre-Reformation Protestant...

We use the largest common factor in 14 items reported in the World Values Surveys as a robust measure of religiosity. This measure is held to identify the importance of religion in all aspects of people's life. The level of religiosity differs by about 50 percentage points between rich and poor...

This paper contributes to trade diversification literature by comparing changes in relative (i.e. assessed in comparison with world patterns) heterogeneity of import and export structures in the process of economic development. In particular, by focusing on the diversification of imports, we add...