This paper argues that the single most important factor that explains East Asia's development success was its fast structural transformation toward industrialization, manufacturing in particular. Workers moved out of agriculture into manufacturing, and the sector diversified and upgraded its...

Most of the time the budget constraints in the socialist economies were harder than in developing countries and no less hard than in developed countries. The soft budget constraints (SBC) in socialist economies were not pervasive, as most authors believe, but selective, i.e. involved...

This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before entering a period of premature deindustrialization....

We focus on special characteristics of the manufacturing sector, in terms of employment generation and productivity growth, that enable the rapid, resilient economic catch-up of developing countries. We consider the 'developer's dilemma' and the relationship between manufacturing value added or...

India presents an unique example of manufacturing capability in most sectors, but low integration into GVCs. This paper examines the reasons for India's low integration into GVCs, especially in the manufacturing sector. It argues that one of the reasons for India's low integration into GVCs is...

We examine the extent to which two of Africa’s leading gold mining economies, Ghana and Tanzania, have adopted transformative local procurement policies to enhance backward linkages from the minerals sector. We assess the impact that evolving legislation in the gold industry has had on...

Multinational production has become increasingly important in recent decades. Countries resort to different industrial policies to influence the geography of this production. In this paper, we focus on a ubiquitous “soft” industrial policy that aims at reducing information barriers -...

While popular opinion often pictures FDI flowing in search of lowest-wage, lowest- skilled activities in emerging markets, actual FDI to such countries increasingly addresses medium to high-skilled manufacturing sectors. Such FDI might be called "Quality FDI" that contributes to the creation of...

Industrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge. First, there is the argument that host...

To help explain the common failure of oil or other natural resource exporting countries to diversify into industry, it has been common to trace this failure to real exchange rate appreciation. This has also been done in Azerbaijan. However, because Azerbaijan has devoted so much of its oil...