We present a simple model that illustrates how democracy may improve the quality of economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across democracy and that the positive effect of democracy on institutional quality is increasing...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between regional convergence inside of countries in EU and overall economic growth, and, based on it, to establish some relevant behavioural regimes. As data sources we are using the available dataset NUTS 2 from EUROSAT for the period...

Endogenous growth theory assigns an important role for entrepreneurship in the process of economic development. This paper sets to formally test the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth. Entrepreneurship is represented by a number of proxy variables, whereas Total Factor Productivity is...

Is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth (Easterly, 2002)? Recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes. Aggregate cross-country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita GDP growth rates...

This paper addresses the empirical relationship between the level of competition and the rate of productivity growth across thirty sectors of the French production system during the period 1978- 2015. It shows that there exists an optimal level of competition for each sector that is defined by...

The last two decades have seen a lot research devoted to understanding the economic impact of telecoms infrastructure; however, the explosion of mobile technology, especially in the last decade, has received much less attention. This study addresses important evidence gaps by considering the...

Certainly the current crisis is affecting seriously the convergence process in EU. Starting from the spatial distribution in EU of some fundamental development indicators before the current crisis, we try to estimate the impact of the prolonged crisis. During last years, the less developed...

This paper provides an assessment of Russia’s long-term growth prospects. In particular, it addresses the question of the medium- and long-term sustainability of the country’s currently high growth rates. Starting from the notion that Russia’s fast economic expansion in recent years has...