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Economic growth requires confidence in the state's ability to enforce secure exchange. But when states selectively enforce rule of law, political considerations can moderate the trust that buyers have in sellers. I argue that political connections produce moral hazard in exchange because they introduce biases in expectations of judicial enforcement. Buyers avoid trade with politically connected sellers, and, in this context of unequal enforcement, formal contracts disproportionately protect politically connected buyers. To examine these features of connections and contracts, I created a sales business in Senegal and randomized whether employees signaled political connections and/or offered formal contracts during transactions. The results show that political connections decreased buyers' willingness to exchange. Formal contracts increased exchange, though primarily for connected buyers. These findings show that asymmetric political connections can impede daily trade and intensify economic inequalities in developing contexts, while simultaneously demonstrating the limits of state institutions for mitigating politically driven moral hazard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many post-war countries, the relative security brought to rural areas is construed by government officials and business actors as an opportunity for development. This is particularly true for marginal areas, where opportunities for economic development had previously been hindered by the threat of violence. This provides a favourable context for the construction of commodity frontiers. Through the case of Colombia, I show that one of the main challenges faced by frontier policy narratives amounts to differentiating wartime dispossession from peacetime legitimate accumulation. This poses intractable challenges to policymakers and business actors, as it fuels the contradictions between peace consolidation and post-war development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author explores neoliberalism and the political ideology of liberal democracy. Topics discussed include the recorded deceleration of economic growth following the introduction of neoliberal policies, the acknowledgment of neoliberalism by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and the way the U.S. political system influenced the economic situation in the country.

Why are the fastest growing countries predominantly autocracies? One possible reason is that growth "tigers" are poor countries that begin growing when their distance to the most advanced economies is large, and poor countries tend to be autocracies. All that is needed to reproduce the observed historical patterns is income convergence and a positive association of income with incidence of democracy, with no assumptions about the effect of regimes on growth. We take Robert Lucas's macroeconomic model and augment it with regime dynamics identified by Adam Przeworski and colleagues and Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, calibrate the model, and show that these dynamics account for the data well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Zhengzhou is one of the fastest growing cities in China, but has attracted comparatively little international attention. This paper charts the contemporary transformation of Zhengzhou and highlights some of the challenges that arise from its recent growth. It demonstrates the rise of Zhengzhou from small town to megacity. This transformation has occurred in less than seven decades with Zhengzhou benefiting from its geographic importance and its position as a provincial capital in China's hierarchical system of government. While western accounts typically focus on the role of market forces and agglomeration economies in explaining the rise of megacities, we show the role of political decisions in explaining the growth of Zhengzhou as an international centre for manufacturing, commerce and logistics. The paper concludes that innovation and reform in regional governance, particularly to deal with emerging challenges, are necessary, if it is to develop a well-functioning megacity. Highlights • Zhengzhou is one of the eight great capitals of ancient China benefiting from its geographic importance; • Zhengzhou's contemporary transformation highlights the importance of political decision-making in shaping urban development in China; • Zhengzhou is leading the way of e-commerce cross-border trade and logistics industries. • Challenges facing Zhengzhou call for paradigm change in the governance of urban development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia provides one of the clearest examples of a 'developmental state' in Africa. Drawing on a deeply entrenched experience of statehood, the present Ethiopian regime has embarked on an ambitious programme, depending on the central capture of 'rents', to fund a massive expansion especially in communications, education, and hydroelectricity. High initial rates of growth have been achieved. However, the political setting is tightly constrained and the state has not allowed the private sector freedom of action to generate the required levels of production. Ultimate success will depend on the capacity to transform a state that has itself been central to the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As development is no longer simply conceived of as economic growth, but also as encapsulating human development, the role of the developmental state must be rethought. Focusing on the state's ability to deliver collective goods such as welfare has become an important task for developing and developed nations alike, and nowhere is this more important than in China. Consequently, intimate connections between the political and industrial elites are no longer sufficient and may actually be counterproductive to the success of the developmental state. Diverging from traditional developmental states, China shows that incorporation of new stakeholders is not premised on principles of human development. The novelty that China brings to re-thinking and re-articulating a new developmental state framework is that the development state of the twenty-first century can create new alliances such as with non-governmental organisations to meet human development objectives, but substantive change with regards to how the state is organised is not a precondition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the educational structure of the population at a regional level as a factor for growth. It compares the impact of education (with a particular focus on higher education) and the impact of other factors on the economic development of the regions (direct foreign investment, number of nonfinancial corporations per 1 000 people, costs of acquiring tangible fixed assets per capita in BGN), number of students in colleges and universities per 1 000 people, value of paid amounts under contracts of municipalities within the administrative area as beneficiaries under operational programs, BGN/person). Each of these indicators is compared with the role of higher education graduates at regional level for economic growth by looking not only at individual effects but also in the aggregate effects of these indicators. The analysis presents the dynamics of each indicator and the distances between the regions (compared to the maximum - the region with the highest values and the country average). The analysis presents whether there has been a convergence between the regions over the years or, the contrary - deepening differences between them. The article highlights the ideal mix of factors, needed for successful regional economic development and its supporting policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between political freedom and economic growth is considered very critical in political economics. On the one hand, political freedom is found to be positively correlated with economic growth (Lipset 1993; Przeworski and Limongi 1993; Barro 1997; Minier 1998; and Przeworski 2004). On the other hand, a number of high growing countries experienced low political rights such as: China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Besides, several democratic countries faced low economic growth such as: Greece and Spain (Arat 1988; Vanhanen 1990; Heo and Tan 2001). This study aims at examining the impact of political freedom on economic growth. Since, the literature covered three contradictory findings regarding the main driver of economic growth, an unbalanced panel of dataset running from 1970 to 2012 and spanning 92 (high and low income countries) was adopted to address our research question. The data was retrieved from the World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI) and the Global Development Finance (GDF) databases. Furthermore, classification of countries political freedom was derived from the Transparency International. This study considered the following factors as the main determinants of growth: population growth rate, mortality rate, fertility rate, human capital, government expenditures, foreign direct investment, culture and political risk. In addition, the significance of the adopted variables was compared between two models: Model 1 (high political rights) and Model 2 (low political rights). Through comparing results based on income level, it is revealed that there are more differences between countries. Countries with high political rights (even with different income levels) show that all factors have similar effect on economic growth except the fertility rate. Conversely, countries with low political rights show different results. The growth rate of population is statistically significant in high income countries but not significant in low income ones. In contrast, mortality rate is not significant in high income countries but highly significant in low income countries. Likewise, the fertility rate is statistically significant in countries with high income but not significant in countries with low income. Finally, fiscal policy (government expenditures) does not seem to be effective in both groups. In summary, regardless of the income level, the lack of political rights makes both the fiscal policy and the foreign direct investment invaluable for economic growth. Contrary to Prescott (2014), Taylor (2014), and Summers (2014), this paper concludes that foreign investors prefer high political freedom over internal policies within a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the close link between economic performance and citizen satisfaction with democracy in Southern Europe. Topics discussed include the impact of political uncertainty in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain on the countries' economic landscape, the use of the Eurobarometer series to measure satisfaction with democracy and the relationship between economic development and citizen satisfaction.

Regional differences in economic growth have been observed within many countries. Our story emphasises three region-specific factors driving growth—capital, labour and political factors. Conditional on differences in production factor ( i.e. , labour and capital) variations across democratic states, what role do differences in underlying “political factors” across regions play in accounting for regional growth disparities? We build a political economy model of endogenous growth where regions have the same political institutions, but experience different (and estimable) distributions over voter political biases ( i.e. , our “political factors”). In our model, political factors affect regional productivity as a consequence of politico-economic equilibrium . We discipline our regional growth accounting exercises by calibrating/estimating each model to American state-level economic and political-survey data. We show that the capital factor is the predominant driving force behind growth in American states. Nevertheless, regional variations in distributions of voter's political biases also account a great deal for regional growth disparities. We also evaluate how much politics would have distorted agents' welfare and regional growth, were regional economies given the opportunity to live under an efficient social planner's allocation system; and, if agents were to live under the same democratic system but where all voters have equal voting influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dynamics of institutional adaptation in fast-growing, highly interconnected polities in the developing world, and challenges the thesis in modernization theory which posits that economic growth and thus higher per-capita income lead over time to democracy. One mechanism often proposed to explain this link is the idea that economic growth and higher per capita income in a society lead individual citizens in that society to become more receptive to democratic values and norms, and that this receptivity can pave the way for the birth of democracy. Yet evidence increasingly demonstrates that the link is at best tenuous and often not empirically valid. Why have many fast-growing economies and modernizing societies not made a transition to democracy, as predicted by modernization theory? This paper addresses this question, with ideas from complex adaptive systems and evolutionary social psychology, as well as case analyses of Turkey and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary debates on the relationship between migration and development focus extensively on how migrant remittances affect the economies of sending countries. Yet remittances also produce dynamic political consequences in migrants’ origin communities. Income earned abroad creates political opportunities for migrant groups to participate in the provision of public services in their hometowns. Focusing on organizational variation in partnerships across time and space, this article examines the conditions under which the transnational coproduction of public goods between organized migrants and public agencies at origin shapes democratic governance. I argue that local citizen inclusion and government engagement interact to determine four different types of coproduction: corporatist, fragmented, substitutive, and synergetic. Using four comparative case studies based on fieldwork in three Mexican states, I trace central mechanisms to organizational forms of coproduction and describe how emergent variation affects democratic governance and state–society relations. I show how transnational forces, when collaborating with local social and political institutions, can profoundly affect democratic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic modelling is vital to our understanding of the world - and even more vital to policymakers. Yet, says Alison McGovern, do they provide us with the certainty that we think they do? And is our focus on economic evidence in political discourse really representative of the bases on which policy decisions are actually made? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new approach to use qualitative information for investigating central banks' monetary policy strategy. Quantitative assessment indicators which are generated from a central bank's public statement with the balance statistic method are used to estimate Taylor-type rules. This procedure allows to directly capture a policymaker's assessment of macroeconomic variables which are relevant for the decision making process. As an application of the proposed method, a novel real time data set consisting of assessment indicators for the Bundesbank is generated to re-investigate its monetary policy. The analysis provides evidence that (i) the Bundesbank was a flexible monetary targeter and (ii) that the proposed indicator variables contain information beyond that of standard macroeconomic variables used in monetary policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether aid contributed to institutional development in transition economies. We find that aid flows have a positive effect on democratization, especially on constraints on the executive and political participation. At the same time, total aid has no effect on overall quality of governance, while US aid appears to have a negative impact on some dimensions of governance. Aid’s differential impact on democracy and governance is consistent with uneven development of institutions and the democracy consolidation hypothesis. We also find that aid has a non-linear effect on democracy. Openness has a positive effect on both democracy and good governance. Oil resources have an adverse effect on democracy. Adult mortality, civil war and adherence to Islam are all detrimental to good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze free-riding behavior of Finnish municipalities prior to voluntary municipal mergers. The merger process creates a temporary common pool problem, because of a delay from the initial decision to the actual merger during which municipalities stay autonomous. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the stronger free-riding incentive a municipality faced the more it increased its debt and spent its cash reserves. These funds were spent mostly on investments and current expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central government bailouts of local governments are commonly viewed as a recipe for local fiscal indiscipline, as local governments learn that the center will come to the rescue in times of trouble. However, little is known about the consequences of bailouts granted conditional on local governments first making efforts to improve the situation. We examine a case in which the Swedish central government provided conditional grants to 36 financially troubled municipalities. We use the synthetic control method to identify suitable comparison units for each of the 36 municipalities. To compare the development of costs and the fiscal surplus of admitted municipalities to that of their most similar counterparts during the decade after the program, we then estimate fixed effects regressions on the resulting sample. The analysis suggests that conditional bailouts did not erode, and may even have improved, fiscal discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives This article investigates whether economic growth and income level affect revolution attempts and successful revolutions. Methods The article conducts a statistical analysis, mainly using panel data logit models, on a data set including 150 countries with time series from 1919 to 2003. Results Low short-term growth increases probabilities of both attempted and successful revolutions. There is some evidence that higher income levels mitigate revolution attempts, but this is not robust and further analysis indicates that any association may stem from oil income more specifically. There is no net effect of income level on successful revolution, but high income seemingly reduces probability of successful revolution more in democracies than in dictatorships. Although revolutions occur more frequently after 'J curves' and 'decremental deprivation patterns,' this is largely due to economic crises and not the more complex growth patterns as hypothesized by, respectively, Davies and Gurr. Conclusion Low short-term economic growth induces revolutions, whereas the impact of income level is less clear and seemingly contingent on factors such as regime type and source of income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a test of the impact of voters' political ideology on economic growth and of the role of preferences for government size as a transmission channel. We focus on France from the beginning of its stable democratic experience in 1871. A move of voters' ideology to the right increases economic growth over the total observation period. However, the growth effect of ideology is mediated by voters' preferences for government size only during the post-World War II period. For reverse causality concerns, we use the political ideology of other historical democracies as an instrument variable for France's ideology. ( JEL E6, O43, H11) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we attempt to derive and test the role of energy prices on economic growth. We first developed a two-sector endogenous growth model, based on J Polit Economy 1991; 99:500–521. We modified the model such that consumption goods sector uses energy as an input along with capital. The model allows us to show that the growth rate of energy price has a negative effect on the growth rates of energy use and real GDP. Following this, derived theoretical relationships between energy prices and economic growth and energy consumption were tested empirically using error-correction based panel cointegration tests and panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. We applied this methodology on data of composite energy prices, GDP per capita and energy consumption per capita for sixteen countries for the period between 1978 and 2011. We found significant cointegration between energy prices and real GDP per capita, as well as between energy prices and energy consumption per capita. Moreover, long-run estimates reveal negative and significant effects of composite energy prices on both GDP per capita and energy consumption per capita. We suggest that increasing the share of renewable energy sources in energy consumption would help policy-makers to control permanent long-term increases in consumer energy prices, in turn leading to an increase in economic growth, and hence in welfare. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting the existence of a previously neglected welfare-improving channel of renewable energy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Many social scientists rely on the rule of law in their accounts of political or economic development. Many, however, simply equate law with a stable government capable of enforcing the rules generated by a political authority. As two decades of largely failed efforts to build the rule of law in poor and transition countries and continuing struggles to build international legal order demonstrate, we still do not understand how legal order is produced, especially in places where it does not already exist. We here canvas literature in the social sciences to identify the themes and gaps in the existing accounts. We conclude that this literature has failed to produce a microfoundational account of the phenomenon of legal order. We then discuss our recent effort to develop the missing microfoundations of legal order to provide a better framework for future work on the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective functioning of the lobbying phenomenon facilitates economic development for every country. However this form of political participation can weaken economic growth if it is not properly controlled. In order to do that the Polish Parliament passed the Law on lobbying. This act introduced new legal terms (lobbying activity, professional lobbying activity) and new institutions (the Polish Lobbying Register, the Legislative Work Programme, a public hearing). It turned out that this statute had been a total failure in practice. Although many entities entered into the Polish Lobbying Register, there were few professional lobbying activities exercised in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Ministries, the Sejm and the Senate between 2006 and 2010. Other new institutions were used rarely as well. The Law on lobbying hinders development of lobbying phenomenon in the Republic of Poland and should be changed immediately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study revisits the political effect of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the level of democracy in developing countries. The author finds that FDI has dual political effects based on the panel corrected standard error (PCSE) analysis using panel data covering 124 developing countries from 1970 to 2005. Although the political effect of aggregate FDI is negative, FDI from developed democracies exerts a significant positive effect on democracy. FDI in the primary sector plays a negative role in the political development in developing countries. The author also finds a regional difference in the political effect of FDI due to uneven distribution of disaggregated FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of China’s economic rise and political system, multiyear comprehensive and sectoral plans issued by the national government tend to be played down as futile efforts at reigning in a political economy increasingly driven by market incentives and decentralized decisions. Contrary to this, we provide evidence that China’s planning system has been transformed alongside the economic transition, yet remains central to almost all domains of public policy making and the political institutions that have fostered China’s high-speed growth and economic stability. The incorporation of experimental programs into macro-plans, a tiered hierarchy of policy oversight, newly introduced mid-course plan evaluations, and systematic top-level policy review have allowed Chinese planners to play a central role in economic policy making without succumbing to the rigidity traps that debased traditional planned economies. By better understanding how the planning cycle influences incentives and resources of successive layers of bureaucracies and jurisdictions, and how it updates itself and adapts to new challenges, it is possible to explain a greater proportion of the Chinese policy-making process, including many of its successes and pathologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the long-standing emphasis in the developmental state literature on the powerful pilot agency as an essential component of industrialization. Although a pilot agency may be able to facilitate growth in mature industries, we argue that policy makers seeking to promote rapid innovation-based competition must instead rely on continuous, radical policy innovation. We argue that this kind of experimentation is more likely to occur at the periphery of the public sector, in agencies with few hard resources and limited political prestige. In addition to providing a novel interpretation of how states enter new, high-technology markets, we explain why some successful countries become less innovative over time. As agencies successfully introduce radical policy innovations, their higher profile exposes them to greater political interference and reduces their entrepreneurial capacity. The argument is supported by within-case analysis of two historically low-technology economies that successfully promoted rapid innovation-based growth, Finland and Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-Sahara African countries have had a checkered past when it comes to good governance and institutions. Increasingly, economists and policy makers are recognizing the importance of governance and institutions for economic growth and development. The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has four main goals: eradicating poverty, promoting sustainable growth and development, integrating Africa into the world's economy, and accelerating the empowerment of women. Using fixed and random effects, and Arellano-Bond models, this paper investigates the role of governance in explaining the sub-optimal economic growth performance of African economies. Our results suggest that good governance or lack thereof, contributes to the differences in growth of African countries. Furthermore, our results indicate that the role of governance on economic growth depends on the level of income. In a nutshell, our results demonstrate that without the establishment and maintenance of good governance, achieving the goals of NEPAD will be hampered in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the economy in a single country contracts, voters often punish the government. When many economies contract, voters turn against their governments much less frequently. This suggests that the international context matters for the domestic vote, yet most research on electoral accountability assumes that voters treat their national economies as autarkic. We decompose two key economic aggregates—growth in real gross domestic product and unemployment—into their international and domestic components and demonstrate that voters hold incumbents more electorally accountable for the domestic than for the international component of growth. Voters in a wide variety of democracies benchmark national economic growth against that abroad, punishing (rewarding) incumbents for national outcomes that underperform (outperform) an international comparison. Tests suggest that this effect arises not from highly informed voters making direct comparisons but from “pre-benchmarking” by the media when reporting on the economy. The effect of benchmarked growth exceeds that of aggregate national growth by up to a factor of two and outstrips the international component of growth by an even larger margin, implying that previous research may have underestimated the strength of the economy on the vote. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relevance of the Quantity Theory of Money to Developing economies is questioned. A skeptical examination of the facts upon which the theory is based, as well as of the theory itself , reveals much weakness. Indeed, it is the evidence from the developed economies that suffices to justify skepticism about the Quantity Theory. Money is a means to effect transactions and savings; what will be used as money depends upon such a miscellany of factors that no 'theory' can be expected to emerge. Monetary policy will be dependent on so many specific factors that most LDC's are probably better off using the general principles to develop their own 'theory'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya and Malaysia embarked on quite similar development trajectories in the 1960s, but economic growth figures started to diverge widely in the 1980s and 1990s. Governance issues are often suggested as the major binding constraint in the Kenyan development trajectory whereas Malaysia scores well on governance indicators; but similar governance problems to those in Kenya can be found in Malaysia. However, Malaysia has the resources to overcome these, whereas access to finance appears to be a binding constraint in Kenya. Essential in the Malaysian development trajectory appear to be islands of efficiency that are relatively isolated from rent-seeking, notably the oil company Petronas. The paper therefore contributes to the debate on the role of institutions in the literature on the resource curse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rapid economic development has increased mass political participation in market reform China. Many electoral authoritarian regimes with a good record of economic development have experienced the growing participation of elite/middle-class citizens. Under the Chinese Communist Party regime, however, the poor mass is the main group to participate drastically more. This is because despite rapid aggregate growth, the mass have suffered extensively from excessive exploitation with high levels of corruption and inequality, which benefits many local elites. The regime has evaded authoritarian election but channeled such mounting participatory demands into an extensive petition (Xinfang) institution nationwide. As a result, the mass petition activism has rapidly increased since the early 1990s. This article finds the specific determinants of such petition activism with newly assembled data on provincial petition frequency and multiple case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite ongoing faith in their ability to deliver meaningful reductions in GHG emissions as the Durban climate summit approaches in December 2011 and as the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 looms large, carbon markets have been adversely affected by low prices that are failing to drive necessary investment in low-carbon technology and a series of scandals about their integrity. Some Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects have nevertheless delivered reductions in GHG emissions and sustainable development benefits. However, these benefits are too few, and strong incentives still remain in place to go for ‘low-hanging fruit’ opportunities that bring few additional environmental and developmental gains. Although governance reforms have a part to play in addressing these issues, these are not teething problems that can be easily weeded out with further institutional learning and innovation. They touch on the deeper politics of carbon markets and the role politics play in responses to climate change that have to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why have carbon markets been rapidly adopted as policy solutions to climate change in the last decade? Perhaps surprisingly, this question has attracted virtually no attention in the large literature on such markets. The standard arguments given for why carbon markets are good ways to respond to climate change do not explain why such markets have flourished as governance mechanisms in relation to climate. Carbon markets have spread and become taken-for-granted because of the potential they give to certain powerful actors (financiers, specifically) to create new cycles of investment, profits and growth. As a consequence, they make possible a political coalition combining financiers with environmentalists. This coalition has considerable potential to legitimize substantial cuts in carbon emissions in the face of continued opposition from other interests. It is the combination of these two elements – the promotion of specific growth sectors and the construction of a political coalition – that constitutes the principal political virtue of carbon markets. In order to demonstrate this claim, the history of emissions trading is traced and the implication of this analysis is explored for the further building of climate governance centred on carbon markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution discusses Ron Martin's Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography, 'Rethinking Regional Path Dependence: Beyond Lock-in to Evolution'. The lecture offered original ideas on how to avoid some of the pitfalls associated with path dependence theories and the equilibristic understanding of the temporality of economic change. This contribution addresses the question of co-evolution of the economic and the political in regional and local industrial evolution. It questions the conception of temporality that seems implicit in the framework. It is suggested that the notion of punctuated co-evolution may be a way forwards, avoiding some of the difficulties in Martin's model. The contribution concludes by discussing the analytical limits of path dependence models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My aim in this contribution is to respond to the three preceding critiques of my Roepke Lecture on 'Rethinking Regional Path Dependence: Beyond Lock-in to Evolution'. Each critique raises some pertinent and challenging issues: specifically that Marxist regional political economy is a more powerful perspective with which to 'take history seriously'; that I should have given due recognition to the idea of 'punctuated evolution'; and that my attempt to revise and extend the concept of path dependence has ontological problems. I welcome these commentaries, as they contribute to the very debate that my Roepke Lecture was intended to initiate. But I argue that these critiques are themselves contestable, and that none of them undermines the main thrust of that lecture. My aim in the latter was to suggest that we need to widen and revise the concept of path dependence if it is to function as a an evolutionary concept, to set it free from the overly restrictive and conservative interpretation (of 'lock-in') that it has all too often been given in economic-geographic applications. I defend that aim here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• COVID-19 has exposed major faultlines and fragilities in current systems. • A structural-unruly duality characterises emergence, progression and impact. • Mainstream development thinking and practice are part of the problem. • Transformations are needed in science-policy, economies and governance. • Resilience, equity, diversity, care and inclusive politics are required. COVID-19 is proving to be the long awaited 'big one': a pandemic capable of bringing societies and economies to their knees. There is an urgent need to examine how COVID-19 – as a health and development crisis - unfolded the way it did it and to consider possibilities for post-pandemic transformations and for rethinking development more broadly. Drawing on over a decade of research on epidemics, we argue that the origins, unfolding and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic require analysis that addresses both structural political-economic conditions alongside far less ordered, 'unruly' processes reflecting complexity, uncertainty, contingency and context-specificity. This structural-unruly duality in the conditions and processes of pandemic emergence, progression and impact provides a lens to view three key challenge areas. The first is how scientific advice and evidence are used in policy, when conditions are rigidly 'locked in' to established power relations and yet so uncertain. Second is how economies function, with the COVID-19 crisis having revealed the limits of a conventional model of economic growth. The third concerns how new forms of politics can become the basis of reshaped citizen-state relations in confronting a pandemic, such as those around mutual solidarity and care. COVID-19 demonstrates that we face an uncertain future, where anticipation of and resilience to major shocks must become the core problematic of development studies and practice. Where mainstream approaches to development have been top down, rigid and orientated towards narrowly-defined economic goals, post-COVID-19 development must have a radically transformative, egalitarian and inclusive knowledge and politics at its core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study growth in an economy composed of sectors producing specific goods with advantage under fragmented competition. The government allocates public inputs. Sectorial political power defines government objectives and restrictions, and consists of passive resistance (bounding taxation), organized resistance (an effective minimum welfare demand), and socially organized power (pushing Sectorial objectives). Income distribution and growth, mechanisms and incentives for public investment allocation, and political organization incentives, are strikingly different functions of input dependence and political power in open and closed economies. Long-term political economy equilibria and tendencies in political transition due to technical or trade policy changes can be modeled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]