Many economies have undergone the process of privatizing their state-owned enterprises. Recently, however, this process has slowed down in some economies and has been completely stalled in others. Here we formalize the view that this is so because these enterprises are major instruments of...

Many developing economies are characterized by the dominance of a super metropolis. Taking historical Rome as the archetype of a city that centralizes political power to extract resources from the rest of the country, we develop two models of rent-seeking and expropriation which illustrate...

Several theories have been advanced on the beneficial effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth. However, mixed empirical findings have resulted in a long-standing debate. This study explores the global FDI–growth relationship through an ‘informed’ econometric analysis predicated...

This paper compares different fiscal integration schemes on the basis of their ability to finance public investments and resilience to debt distress and contagion. Complete integration schemes, where a central authority chooses the level of public investments with productivity-enhancing...

The process of economic development is characterized by substantial reallocations of resources across sectors. In this paper, we construct a multi-sector model in which there are barriers to the movement of labor from low-productivity traditional agriculture to modern sectors. With the barrier...

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of...

Climate change will impose large and differentiated tolls across countries. This paper suggests that economic fragility and resilience against climate change-driven natural shocks are shaped by: (i) the elasticity of input substitution in resource-intensive sectors, (ii) the trade regime, and...

Developing countries are facing mounting pressures to incorporate environmental concerns into their policy reform agendas. This paper finds that common environmental policies, such as levying taxes to reduce the excessive exploitation of natural assets, can be self-defeating when (i)...

This paper explores the nexus between the issue of sovereign debt and investment in infrastructure, emphasizing the case of economies of scale. The focus is on debt contracts that are incentive compatible. It is shown that public and private financial institutions may need to lend amounts above...