This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that landed elites may block technological change and economic development if they fear that they will lose future political power (Acemoglu and Robinson (2002, 2006, and 2012). It exploits a plausible exogenous change in the distribution of political...

Trade theory and economic geography suggest that the removal of trade barriers is likely to bring about more economic specialisation and potentially more diverse development paths between countries and regions. Thus, the deepening and extending European integration should be accompanied by an...

Concerns about the duration of China's growth and hence the question of a permanent significant contribution of China to world economic growth relate, amongst other things, to the problem of reducing regional disparity in China. While China's high average growth is driven by a small number of...

The metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro has an urban structure "macrocefálica" in which the hinterland remains "the shadow of the metropolis" with other reduced centrality. However, in the recent period, there was the advent of large investment projects in its periphery, notably in the steel,...

Limiting global warming in line with the goals in the Paris Agreement will require substantial technological and behavioural transformations. This challenge drives many of the current modelling trends. This paper undertakes a review of 17 state-of-the-art recursive-dynamic computable general...

Die Lebensmittelverschwendung (würde sie als ein Land gewertet) ist nach China und den USA weltweit der größte Treibhausgasemittent. Insgesamt werden etwa ein Drittel aller Lebensmittel, die für den menschlichen Verzehr produziert wurden, entsorgt und gehen verloren (FAO, 2015). In...

The present work uses long-term economic development data (1952-2010) as well as a detailed industry-level panel data (1963-2011) to analyse industrialisation patterns in Europe, implications of economic backwardness and the role of European integration in facilitating industrialisation and...

Service industries are increasingly important in international trade and offer additional paths to economic development. There are many opportunities to expand trade in services between South Africa and other African countries. Improvements in urban planning, design, and governance are vital to...

The paper evaluates strategies for developing successful special economic zones and transnational zones for Southern African countries to spur growth and employment. Most special economic zones implemented in Southern Africa have largely failed to bring adequate growth and employment due to...

This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy are affected by violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in...