The geographical concentration of related manufacturing and service firms is as old as economic development but it has drawn renewed attention in the last two decades in the wake of the spectacular growth of regional economies such as Silicon Valley (South San Francisco Bay), Route 128 (greater...

Economists increasingly pay attention to social capital as an important determinant of macroeconomic growth performance. At the same time, there is discussion regarding the robustness of the results of empirical growth studies. In a seminal paper, Knack and Keefer (1997) assess the effect of...

This second edition of this publication provides an overview of important contemporary issues relating to foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational enterprises for all those who are interested in this subject, but are not always in a position to follow diverse perspectives and what is...

To investigate the relation between trust and formal institutions, we analyze bilateral trade patterns in a sample of 16 European countries between 1996-2009. Trust in trading partners has a significant positive effect on bilateral trade. However, our results suggest that trust and formal...