Gerschenkron (1962) argued that public institutions such as the State Bank of the Russian Empire spurred the country's industrialization. We test this assertion by exploiting plant-level variation in access to State Bank branches using a unique geocoded factory data set. Employing an...

This paper is an institutional study of the patent systems of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and its successor states Belgium and the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. The patent law of 1817 gave the state wide discretion to accept or refuse patents and to customise their duration,...

In retaliating against Trump’s March 2025 imposition of import tariffs on EU aluminum and steel, the EU’s response should be twofold: one, at the EU level, to apply retaliatory tariffs and negotiations, and two, to support country-level efforts to minimize the impact of tariffs, including...

Currently, achieving sustainable transformation toward a carbon-dioxide-free industrial production process is one of the greatest challenges. The chemical element hydrogen used as an energy source and a basic feedstock can play an important role in reaching this goal. Our analysis is based on...

Vietnam’s path to sustainable and innovative growth increasingly depends on how effectively it diversifies and repositions its export portfolio in the global market, or how the country “brand” itself through its exports to the world. Using data from UN Comtrade, we construct the Product...

The founding of modern Egypt by Muhammad Ali Pasha required an appropriately modern economy, with industry following the model of more advanced European states. The Pasha of Egypt in- volved himself personally in every phase of the organization of Egyptian industry, garnering the experiences of...