The tourism sector accounts nowadays for about 10% of world GDP (source: World Travel & Tourism Council – WTTC) and it is widely acknowledged that tourism activities depend highly on the quality of natural resources (see, among others, Inskeep, 1991). Thus, the aim of sustainable tourism development plans, in order to reach sustainable development goals, should be the decoupling of economic gro...

China has become the world’s largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter. Sectoral production activities promote economic development while also adding considerably to national CO2 emissions. Due to their different sectoral structures, each region shows different levels of economic development and CO2 emissions. The Chinese government hopes to achieve the dual objectives of economic growth and CO2 emi...

We explore the role of language policy choices as a source of growth and development of nation states. First in a cross-country framework we document that choosing as official a language that is distant from the ones spoken by the local population is negatively correlated with the level of income per capita. This effect is economically meaningful and robust to a wide variety of controls such as...

The typical post-Bretton-Woods era development approach that puts great emphasis on central government efforts to promote development, has changed dramatically and local governments have now emerged as important players in development policy. Now, the concept of requirements for achieving the development objectives is changing and many countries around the world are now implementing fiscal dece...

the least developed and developing countries constitute two third of the members the world trade organizations (wto). these groups of countries have different views and concerns on international trade issues. as far as development is concerned, they have different needs and their economic system is often weak and fragile and therefore, they need extra protection. the wto agreements contain spec...

Governments have paid great attention to the results of happiness research. In many countries, the object of government policy is no longer taken to be development in terms of raising GNP. Their focus has shifted to a National Index of Happiness. This paper analyses whether such an aggregate Happiness Index is a better guide to development than GNP or other indices of development. We argue that...

It is well established that there are collective economic gains that can be realised from local industrial agglomerations. These gains arise from labour market pooling, knowledge and information flows, collective learning and shared business services. Realising the potential gains requires collective action, often facilitated by government and other public institutions. Recent economic policy i...