We study the effects of large transportation costs on economic development. Since reliable data for developing countries are hard to come by, we go back in time to the Midwest and the Northeast of the U.S. This is a natural case to study because starting from 1840 decent data is available...

For a set of 14 developing countries I evaluate whether differences in the marginal product of human capital between sectors - estimated from individual-level wage data - have meaningful effects on aggregate productivity. Under the most generous assumptions regarding the homogeneity of human...

The last twenty years have witnessed periods of sustained appreciations of the real exchange rate in emerging economies. The case of Mexico between 1988 and 2002 is representative of several episodes in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe in which countries opening to capital flows...

Using annual data from 1919 to 2002, the structural transformation hypothesis proposed by Simon Kuznets helps explain the U-shape of U.S. top 1% or 0.01% income share distributions. Flexible autoregressive lag representations are employed and generalized methods of moments reinforce our results....

We study the sectoral allocation of public infrastructure investments in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors in India. In addition to the changing employment and output shares of these two sectors, the capital output ratio in agriculture in India has fallen, while it has risen in...

Becoming a rich country requires the ability to produce and export commodities that embody certain characteristics. We classify 779 exported commodities according to two dimensions: (1) sophistication (measured by the income content of the products exported); and (2) connectivity to other...

This paper calls for a fresh look at industrial policies in the light of recent trends and developments in the global economy. In particular, five new challenges and their implications for industrial policies are discussed. These have been neglected in the debate on industrial policy and include...

The debate on industrial policy (IP) has been characterized by a number of contractions over the concept of industrial policy, its merits, contents and application. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to review the debate on IP. Outlining the concept and instruments of industrial policy,...

Kerala has been a model to other states for her achievements in social development. But in terms of economic growth her performance has for long been very poor and a matter of deep concern. In this context the turnaround in growth that has occurred in Kerala in the nineties , in contrast to the...

This paper develops a two-sector model that illuminates the role played by agricultural modernization in the transition from stagnation to growth. When agriculture relies on traditional technology, industrial development reduces the relative price of industrial products, but has a limited effect...