The present paper draws heavily on the existing empirical literature and compares Asian (mainly the high-performing economies) and African economies to illuminate the patterns of economic development as they developed since the 1960s. The discussion points to strong physical and human capital...

Dierences in key features of the development process across rich and poor countries can provide clues to the sources of the large variation of cross- country income. Kuznets included structural transformation as one of six stylized facts of economic development, nding that developed countries...

In this article we investigate the effect of product market regulation on the international diffusion of productivity shocks. The results indicate that regulations that restrict competition slow the process of adjustment through which best practice production techniques diffuse across borders...

The paper provides quantitative estimates of the productive capacities of the countries in the Asia- Pacific region and their evolution in the past 25 years. It updates the results for 2009 presented in the ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2011 and details the...

This paper analyzes the reasons for the middle income trap in Latin America, where countries have been at the middle income level for decades, and draws out lessons for Asia. The middle income trap captures a situation where a middle income country can no longer compete internationally in...

Recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross-country differences in income levels and growth rates. This paper makes two contributions. First, it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to...

Why are some countries more technologically innovative than others? The dominant explanation amongst political-economists is that domestic institutions determine national innovation rates. However, after decades of research, there is still no agreement on precisely how this happens, exactly...

The paper analyzes the process of Brazilian deindustrialization from the perspective of the transformations occurred in the global economic system in the last three decades. Realizes the performance of the Brazilian industry in the international economy from the technological, productive,...

Germany's economic profile gives reason to believe that the country will emerge strengthened from the current economic crisis. Germany boasts the world's highest share of value-added output attributable to (R&D) intensive goods and knowledge intensive services. At the same time, Germany...