This article studies temporal variations in wealth levels and distribution in an Ottoman context during the eighteenth century. By analysing the probate estate inventories of the Muslim deceased in Kastamonu, located in north-central Anatolia, we demonstrate that real wealth levels generally...

Court records are used extensively in historical research. Preserved as summaries of daily legal proceedings, they give historians a unique opportunity of access to the information about the names, personal characteristics, and socio-economic status of individuals and about the laws, local...

Consensus forecasts for the global economy over the medium and long term predict the world's economic gravity will substantially shift towards Asia and especially towards the Asian Giants, China and India. While such forecasts may pan out, there are substantial reasons that China and India may...

Investment has always played an important role in the economic development strategies of the People's Republic of China. A major reform of the investment system in 2004 shifted the state's focus from direct investment control to industrial policies designed to promote investment in specific...

During the second half of the 20th century Asia as a whole experienced a much higher increase in production per inhabitant than Africa, due to several factors which caused improvements in industrial development and moderation in the rates of population growth. We present a comparison, at area...

Coverage of Russia in western newspapers leaves an overriding impression that the place is corrupt and doomed. Economists and pundits have focused on corruption, and the lack of the rule of law as the main causes of last year's crash. These structural problems definitely exist and they are...

There has been a revival of interest in small industries and their linkages with a nation's institutional arrangements among both academicians and policy makers. Extending the definition of institutions to include formal and informal rules, this paper attempts to identify these linkages using...

This policy essay, written as a UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Working Paper, reflects on the social factors underlying Pakistan's chronic debt crises, their resolution, and potential paths to future prevention. It stresses the need for a debtors' perspective...

There has been a revival of interest in small industries and their linkages with a nation's institutional arrangements, among both academicians and policy makers. Extending the definition of institutions to include formal and informal rules, this paper attempts to identify these linkages using...

This paper reviews recent revisionist studies of imperialism that demonstrate the complexities behind the late Qing state's strategy to accommodate to new challenges born out of foreign conflicts exacerbated by domestic crises. These publications have pointed scholars away from the exclusivity...