This paper addresses the lack of connection between theory and empirics in most export diversification - economic development studies. We provide a Ricardian-based theoretical explanation of countries' relative export variety as a function of the level of technology and country size assessed...

This chapter (to appear in the forthcoming Handbook of International Economics, Vol. 5) develops a framework with which to interpret and survey answers to the question: how does increased openness affect aggregate welfare in a typical developing country? We decompose answers into four...

Recent years have seen a significant focus in the literature on growth and development on the idea that legal and political institutions are the key determinant of economic development. The main finding of this paper is that the focus on the primacy of legal and political institutions may be...

This paper examines the underlying assumptions about socioeconomic transformation within the dominant approaches to the political economy of African countries. We argue that the dominant frameworks within African Studies miss important aspects of contemporary processes of socioeconomic change....

We develop a simple (incumbent versus entrant) strategic deterrence model to study the economic and geopolitical interactions underlying international trade-related infrastructure projects such as the Panama Canal. We study the incentives for global geopolitical players to support allied...

This paper develops a framework to study the interplay between world trade and interest rates. The model incorporates an explicit notion of time and of production length, along the lines of the 'Austrian' tradition of Böhm-Bawerk (1889). Changes in the interest rate affect production lengths,...

The paper presents the dynamics of trade diversity with respect to stages of development in the European context. The analysis focuses on EU27 countries observed across the years 1988-2010 and compared to a sample of 136 international economies at all levels of income per capita. We use product...