A stylized fact of economic development is the structural transformation of countries from traditional, mainly agricultural societies to modern economies dominated by manufacturing and services. In this paper we provide an endogenous growth model to illuminate the role of entrepreneurial...

Start-ups of new firms are important for economic growth. However, start-up rates differ significantly between countries and within regions of the same country. A large empirical literature studies the reasons for this and attempts to identify the regional determinants of start-ups. In contrast,...

The success of new start-up firms often depends on timing. It is valuable for the potential entrepreneur to wait for the right moment before starting a new firm. In this paper we provide a theoretical model to determine the optimal time for starting a new firm. We integrate insights from the...

Success in international trade depends, amongst other things, on distance from markets. Most new economic geography models focus on the distance between countries. In contrast much less theorizing and empirical analysis have focused on how distances within a country for instance due to the...

Concerns about the duration of China's growth and hence the question of a permanent significant contribution of China to world economic growth relate, amongst other things, to the problem of reducing regional disparity in China. While China's high average growth is driven by a small number of...

In this paper I empirically investigate the early international entrepreneurship of indigenous Chinese firms using data on 3,948 firms surveyed by the World Bank in 2002-03. I find important differences in the extent and motivation of early internationalization between indigenous and...

Should developing countries focus on diversifying their export basket or should they instead specialize their exports according to their existing comparative advantage? In this paper we attempt to answer this question by reviewing the literature on export diversification and specialization, by...

We use data on 3,948 Chinese firms obtained from the World Bank's Investment Climate Private Enterprise Survey to investigate early international entrepreneurship (international new ventures) in China. The extent of early international entrepreneurship in China is significant: 65 per cent of the...

A small but growing literature has been concerned about the economic (and environmental) vulnerability on the level of countries. Less attention is paid to the economic vulnerability of different regions within countries. By focusing on the vulnerability of subnational regions, our paper...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the highest growth rate in net international migration in the world. The reasons for this migration are investigated in this paper. First, a survey of the literature on the profile and determinants of international migration in SSA is given. Second, panel data on 45...