In the late 1990s, as economists looked back the development period in Africa since 1970s, they put forward the notion “African growth tragedy” , meaning that Africa's poor growth and resulting low income is associated with low schooling, political instability, underdeveloped financial...

In developed economies, agglomeration is skill-biased: larger cities are skill-abundant and exhibit higher skilled wage premia. This paper characterizes the spatial distributions of skills in Brazil, China, and India. To facilitate comparisons with developed-economy findings, we construct...

This paper summarizes and connects the main findings of the habilitation project.The important social developments analyzed, result from the demographic change that many economies will face in the future. Especially on the regional level, problems arise due to increasing disparities in...

The paper aims at testing Florida's concept of the Creative Class using panel data for 323 West German regions for the time period 1975-2004. Applying a dynamic system approach based on GMM, we find that the local concentration of the Creative Class has predictive power for the economic...

This entry discusses the main aspects of London's development since the expansion of the British empire in the nineteenth century. The keys to the city's transformation from imperial to postimperial urban center in the mid-twentieth century are highlighted in the first section. The entry then...

This paper discusses contentious aspects in the planning and development of megaprojects in three cities around the world: Bilbao, Istanbul and Hong Kong. Our purpose is to lay out the variety of controversies, difficulties, obstacles, negative impacts and civic opposition associated to the...

Drawing on insights of current and past editors of top economics and finance journals, we provide guidelines for reviewers in preparing referee reports and cover letters for journals. Peer review is fundamental to the progress of science and we believe that fundamental changes in reviewing...

Peer review is fundamental to the efficacy of the scientific process. We draw from our experience both as editors, authors and association representatives to provide a set of guidelines for referees in preparing their reports and cover letters to journal editors. While our document is directed...

This paper analyzes the effect of resource-based economic specialization on women's labor market outcomes. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields in the Southern United States coupled with a county-level panel derived from US Census data for 1900-1940, we...

Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium. We construct a data set incorporating measures of pre-colonial population density, new measures of present regional per capita income and...