Many countries have failed to use natural resource wealth to promote growth and development. They have been damaged by the volatility of revenues and have failed to save a sufficiently high proportion of their resource revenues and failed to make high-return investments to support...

We discuss regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. We first set out some key facts, and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. We examine whether policy attempts to reduce...

This paper explores the interactions between external trade and regional disparities in the Italian economy since unification. It argues that the advantage of the North was initially based on natural advantage (in particular the endowment of water, intensive in silk production). From 1880...