Advancements in the areas of Information Technologies (IT) and the New Life Sciences (NLS) are helping redefine the boundaries of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Although the fast growth of these technological areas may very well be fueled by the existence of the IPR system itself, in...

This paper investigates the effects of religion on a broad set of development outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. We regroup these outcomes into three broad categories, namely, development process outcomes (growth, investment, conflict, and government quality), institutional outcomes (property...

This paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of Round I of the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ) program using confidential microdata from the Decennial Census and the Longitudinal Business Database. Using rejected and future applicants to the EZ program as controls, we find...

With the current global economic crisis, European preaccesion and structural funds allocated by the European Unioun (which were and are quite consistent for Romania) may represent significant financial support for the acceding countries and those that joined in 2004 and 2007 to provide resources...

Romanian rural areas are a sector that, in the context of transition from socialist economy to market economy, has accumulated numerous dysfunctions, whose resolution requires the identification of viable solutions that are compatible with local potential and at the same time preserve...

This paper critically reviews the impact of globalization on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since the early 1980s. The large gains expected from opening up to international economic forces have, to date, been limited, and there have been significant adverse consequences. Foreign direct investment in...

We investigate the resource curse phenomenon using the African Governance Index that ranks African countries according to their governance quality. First, we allow countries to endogenously select in good- and bad-governance groups. Secondly, using an Arellano-Bond dynamic panel-data estimation,...

Our study analyses stochastic convergence of relative real GDP per capita in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in the period 1960 to 2010. It highlights the importance of considering structural breaks and cross-section dependence in the panel unit root tests. Using the panel...

How do the effects of financial constraints on innovation performance vary by sector and firm characteristics? This paper uses innovation survey data from eleven European countries to examine the heterogeneity of these effects. So far, there has been a lack of cross-country micro-level studies...

From the perspective of recipients, the presence of emerging donors in the aid landscape represents an opportunity to attract additional resources to finance development. This paper investigates how low income countries deal with this complex and changing aid landscape and explore how this...