Since 1950, there has been considerable diversity in developing country experiences. Some countries and some regions have experienced rapid growth and catch up, others have fallen behind. At a global level there is an increasing inequality of per capita incomes. However, within the framework of...

This paper provides a review and synthesis of the findings of the second phase of a research project on institutions and long-run economic performance. It discusses research findings in five areas, namely (1) the relationship between institutional characteristics and the duration of economic...

"Innovation is good for you" appears actually the common feature of most science, technology and innovation studies over the last decades. This appears, however surprising given the fact that innovation failure rather than innovation success appears a much more common feature. Hence the simple,...

For a better understanding of development, we are interested in why in the long run some countries or societies forge ahead, while others stagnate or fall behind. We are especially interested in the conditions under which growth and catch- up can be realised in developing countries. In section 1...

This study distinguishes between industrial policy that stimulates incumbent industry development, `pro-business policy', and industrial policy that promotes the development of free markets, `pro-market policy'. We find that there is a positive relation between the level of countries'...

How much does public capital matter for economic growth? How large should it be? This paper attempts to answer these questions, taking the case of SSA countries. It develops and estimates a model that posits a nonlinear relationship between public investment and growth, to determine the...

We consider a stochastic environment to study interactions among pollution growth, demographic changes, and economic growth. Drawing on the empirical findings of slow convergence patterns of pollution shocks (viz., with a long-memory), we build an analytical framework where stochastic...