South Africa has exhibited tepid economic growth over the past twenty years as well as high levels of income inequality characteristic of a middle income country growth trap. This paper compares and contrasts South Africa's growth trap relative to middle-income peer economies. In addition, we...

While popular opinion often pictures FDI flowing in search of lowest-wage, lowest- skilled activities in emerging markets, actual FDI to such countries increasingly addresses medium to high-skilled manufacturing sectors. Such FDI might be called "Quality FDI" that contributes to the creation of...

While popular opinion often pictures FDI flowing in search of lowest-wage, lowest-skilled activities in emerging markets, actual FDI to such countries increasingly addresses medium to high-skilled manufacturing sectors. Such FDI might be called “Quality FDI” that contributes to the creation...

Global Value Chains (GVCs) started to play an increasing and key role in the global economy from the 1990s on. The market mechanism in GVCs supports industrialisation in the Global South and under certain conditions product and process upgrading. But GVCs do not lead to the catching-up of...

In this study, the prevalent methodology for design of the industrial policy in developing countries was critically assessed, and it was shown that the mechanism and content of classical method is fundamentally contradictory to the goals and components of the endogenous growth theories. This...

This paper's aim is to provide a different standpoint in the development debate, by focusing on the short-sightedness of the international institutions when they propose a development agenda. Focusing on macroeconomic performance and on privatisation, they have found a solution in PPPs, which...

We explore the potential roles of industrial policy in the transition from middle-income to high-income status, and the actual experience of industrial policy in emerging economies. Guided by the conceptual framework of the neo-Schumpeterian approach, we look at industrial policy in the context...

Classic Big Push industrialization envisions state planners coordinating economic activity to internalize a range of externalities that otherwise lock in a low-income equilibrium, but runs afoul of well-known government failure problems. Successful Big Push coordination may occur instead when a...

Prioritizing the growth of particular sectors or regions is often part of a low income country's growth strategy. We study a prototypical example of such policies in Ethiopia, exploiting geographic and sectoral variation in the form and scale of the policy for identification. Using product-level...