This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before entering a period of premature deindustrialization....

The conventional paradigm about development banks is that these institutions exist to target well-identified market failures. However, market failures are not directly observable and can only be ascertained with a suitable learning process. Hence, the question is how do the policymakers know...

This paper examines the progress of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in the People's Republic of China. After defining SOEs and considering their scope of operation within the PRC economy, the focus of the paper is on the major reform waves that followed the deterioration of SOE profitability...

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...

To help explain the common failure of oil or other natural resource exporting countries to diversify into industry, it has been common to trace this failure to real exchange rate appreciation. This has also been done in Azerbaijan. However, because Azerbaijan has devoted so much of its oil...

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...

Industrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge. First, there is the argument that host...

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...

Industrial transformation of Asia arguably constitutes the most surprising and dramatic change in the global economy in the last fifty years. This paper provides an outline of some of the most important trends of this development and analyses selected national industrial policies that promoted...

The role of institutions in Asian development has been intensely contested since Myrdal's Asian Drama, with later contributions from institutional economics and developmental state theory. Despite much progress, the dominant approaches do not agree about the institutions that matter nor do they...