In proposing industrial policies to promote development-enhancing upgrading, both the Middle-Income Trap (MIT) and Global Value Chain (GVC) literatures imply a "technocratic" approach that matches a given technical challenge to the right policy instrument. This paper suggests that, apart from...

East Asia exhibits remarkable economic heterogeneity, yet debates on the region's development have centered predominantly on the most successful cases, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, all examples of the so-called "developmental state" model, or China's economic upswing. Building on the...

Since its economic reforms and opening up, China has experienced rapid economic growth; however, regional disparities in economic development have continued to widen. In exploring the causes of regional economic disparities, historical factors have played a significant role. Grounded in the...

Argentina experienced notably greater land concentration than other frontier economies during the First Globalization, a disparity with lasting political and economic consequences. While existing scholarship emphasizes political explanations for this inequality, we propose a novel hypothesis:...