We argue that the measures of backward linkages used in recent papers on spillovers from multinational companies are potentially problematic, as they depend on a number of restrictive assumptions, namely that (i) multinationals use domestically produced inputs in the same proportion as imported...

It has recently been shown that the firm size distribution is initially skewed to the right and then evolves over time to become more log-normal, and argued that this is likely due to firms initially facing financial constraints, see Cabral and Mata (2003). We conjecture that, it this is true,...

This paper analyses the link between regional inequalities and GDP per capita at the country-level. Our starting hypothesis is that the evolution of regional inequalities should follow a bell-shaped curve as national GDP per capita rises since growth by its very nature is unlikely to appear...