There is some scepticism about Korea as role model of development as the Korean model involved a considerable degree of state activism, unacceptable in today's global environment. This paper propose a capability-based view of the country's catch-up development, arguing that the real lesson from...

I argue that the economic success of Botswana can be explained by the historical development of its institutions which is related to the trajectory of the Tswana states over the past 200 years. These institutions created a much more stable and accountable government than elsewhere in Africa...

It is often claimed that entrepreneurship is indispensable for economic growth and development. These claims are mostly generated by scholars working in the field of entrepreneurship and management studies. In contrast, development economics scholars seem to be less concerned about...

This paper argues that openness to goods trade in combination with an unequal distribution of political power has been a major determinant of the comparatively slow development of resource- or land-abundant regions like South America and the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. We develop a...

This paper examines whether the federal structure of aid-receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness. Following the decentralization theorem, the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness, since local decision-makers are better informed about local needs. At the same...

It is widely recognized that foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an important role in economic development. Internationalization theory is used to explore how inward FDI impacts entrepreneurial activity. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor we find significant differences in...

Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed to their husbands) benefits children. Does this observation imply that targeting transfers to women is good economic policy? We develop a series of noncooperative family bargaining models to understand what kind of...

The move towards multiparty democracy in Zambia in the early 1990s was heralded as the beginning of a new era of more pluralist politics in Africa. The new government’s willingness to adopt economic reforms and policies, hitherto resisted, was also seen as a sign that henceforth African...

During the last few years, the newly coined term middle-income trap has been widely used by policymakers to refer to the middle-income economies that seem to be stuck in the middle-income range. However, there is no accepted definition of the term in the literature. In this paper, we study...

It is widely recognized that foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an important role in economic development. Internationalization theory is used to explore how inward FDI impacts entrepreneurial activity. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor we find significant differences in...