Following a recent line of research promoted by the Harvard Centre for International Development (and by Jeffrey Sachs in particular), the paper explores the relationship between first nature determinants (i.e.: natural geography) and economic as well as industrial development in South American...

Although a high rate of urbanization and a high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features of many developing countries, there is little knowledge of the effects of the former on the latter. Using a large sample of Indian districts from the 1983–1999 period, we find that urbanization...

Using data on Israeli closure in the Palestinian West Bank, we provide new evidence on the labour market effects of conflict-induced restrictions to mobility. We exploit the fact that the placement of physical barriers by Israel was exogenous to local labour market conditions and find a causal...

Summary Effective state-business relations are a set of highly institutionalised, responsive and public interactions between the state and the business sector. This paper examines the impact of effective state-business relations on economic growth across Indian states over the period 1985-2006....

The process of economic integration over the past two decades has been accompanied by an expanding income wedge between skilled and unskilled workers in many developing countries. This was also the case for Ugandan wage employees during the 1990s, which was a period of abrupt trade opening and...

Effective relations between states and business have been increasingly identified as an important institution for sustaining economic development. This paper constructs quantitative indices measuring the quality of state–business relations (SBRs) across Indian states in the 1985–2008 period....

Summary Although the concept of aid for trade has quickly gained prominence among aid donors as well as aid recipients, relatively little is known about its impact on trade-related performance. We use data on a large subset of developing countries for recent years to examine the extent to which...