In this chapter we argue that the endogenous growth model with quality-improving innovations provides a framework for analyzing the determinants of long-run growth and convergence that is versatile, simple and empirically useful. Versatile, as the same framework can be used to analyze how growth...

Today more than half of the 7 billion inhabitants of the planet live in urban areas, with this share expected to keep rising. Whereas in developed countries urbanisation has been a long and slow process, in developing countries this process is now characterised by a really fast pace and a high...

What is the impact of modern transportation technology on long-run economic change in poor countries with high trade costs?  Rail construction in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa provides a natural experiment: 90% of African rail-road lines were built before independence, in a context where...

This chapter describes how the spatial distribution of economic activity changes as economies develop and grow. We start with the relation between development and rural-urban migration. Moving beyond the coarse rural-urban distinction, we then focus on the continuum of locations in an economy...

The link between urban concentration and economic growth at country level is not straightforward, as there are benefits as well as costs associated with urban concentration. Indeed, recent empirical evidence suggests different effects of urban concentration on growth depending on the level of...

The link between urban concentration and economic growth at country level is not straightforward, as there are benefits as well as costs associated with urban concentration. Indeed, recent empirical evidence suggests different effects of urban concentration on growth depending on the level of...

Today more than half of the 7 billion inhabitants of the planet live in urban areas, with this share expected to keep rising. Whereas in developed countries urbanisation has been a long and slow process, in developing countries this process is now characterised by a really fast pace and a high...

The impact of income inequality on economic growth is dependent on several factors, including the time horizon considered, the initial level of income and its initial distribution. Yet, as growth and inequality are also uneven across space, it is also pertinent to consider the effects of the...

Today more than half of the 7 billion inhabitants of the planet live in urban areas, with this share expected to keep rising. Whereas in developed countries urbanisation has been a long and slow process, in developing countries this process is now characterised by a really fast pace and a high...

In this letter I summarise the main results and contributions from my Ph.D. thesis on concentration of resources and economic development. The empirical analysis performed in the thesis, and summarised here, focuses on two mayor world trends in modern economic development, namely increasing...