This research advances the hypothesis that natural land productivity in the past, and its effect on the desirable level of cooperation in the agricultural sector, had a persistent effect on the evolution of social capital, the process of industrialization and comparative economic development...

The EU Lisbon objective to increase the R&D investments to 3% of the GDP by 2010 cannot be achieved in a small country by simply increasing the public sector appropriations for R&D investments. The experience of Ireland and Singapore as well as various Central European transition countries shows...

The paper provides quantitative estimates of the productive capacities of the countries in the Asia- Pacific region and their evolution in the past 25 years. It updates the results for 2009 presented in the ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2011 and details the...

Countries differ markedly in the diversification of their exports. Products differ in the number of countries that export them, which we define as their ubiquity. We document a new stylized fact in the global pattern of exports: there is a systematic relationship between the diversification of a...

Building productive capacities is a top priority for least developed countries to promote development and graduate from the status of least developed country. This paper discusses the challenges and the opportunities for these countries to build their productive capacities. It argues that the...

This paper approaches inclusive development in South and South-West Asia through the framework of structural transformation and productive capacities. It discusses the opportunities for these countries to build their productive capacities through product diversification and presents a list of...

Dierences in key features of the development process across rich and poor countries can provide clues to the sources of the large variation of cross- country income. Kuznets included structural transformation as one of six stylized facts of economic development, nding that developed countries...

The present paper draws heavily on the existing empirical literature and compares Asian (mainly the high-performing economies) and African economies to illuminate the patterns of economic development as they developed since the 1960s. The discussion points to strong physical and human capital...

The industrialization of labour is the main engine of growth during the early stages of economic development. In less developed countries, equipment investment has played a less important role than non-equipment investment; and it has only proved growth enhancing when it either encountered a...

Dans les pays développés, la téléphonie mobile et l’Internet ont suivi des trajectoires A l’inverse, le continent africain se caractérise par des processus de diffusion asynchrones, la pénétration de la téléphonie mobile (41% fin 2010) étant bien supérieure à celle de...