This paper explores heterogeneity in the openness-productivity growth relationship, specifically whether the productivity payoffs from openness or trade liberalisation are conditioned by the quality of a country’s institutions and the extent of natural barriers. The paper endogenously searches for the type of heterogeneity; what variable might be used to capture the heterogeneity and with what ...

In my testimony today, I consider the relative potential advantages and disadvantages of voting systems that can be subjected to objective independent analysis. I emphasize that openness in the design, development, and operation of voting machines can significantly enhance the integrity, transparency, and accountability of the election process. However, openness by itself is not a cure for voti...

In this paper we present a political economy approach in order to explain the degree of financial openness for an economy. In the model, entrepreneurs, who may have good or bad projects, vote for policies, which are proposed by selfish politicians. Two political frictions (ideological adherence and a supermajority requirement) impair political competition and lead to equilibria, where politicia...

Frankel and Romer [Frankel, J., Romer, D., 1999. Does trade cause growth? American Economic Review 89 (3), 379-399] documented positive effects of geographically determined trade openness on economic growth. At the same time, critics fear that openness can lead to a "race to the bottom" that increases pollution and reduces government resources for investments in health and education. We use Fra...

This paper estimates the determinants of labour productivity in European NUTS regions during 1989-1996. We compare three potential explanations of regional advantages: Technological capabilities (proxied by regional patents), agglomeration economies (employment density), and openness. To study the latter we use the number of airplane passengers embarked and disembarked in the region, and found ...

Open innovation is becoming an important strategy in software development. Following this strategy, software companies are increasingly opening up their platforms to third-party products. However, opening up software platforms to third-party applications raises serious concerns about critical quality requirements, such as security, performance, privacy and proprietary ownership. Adopting approp...

All industrialized nations relied on capital account controls for significant periods of their economic development and relaxations of capital account restrictions thought to be an integral aspect of economic development. Economists long advocated the removal of capital controls as a stabilizing factor of the development process to improve efficiency and return economies from distorted factor p...

It is never pleasant to be the first discussant on the stage and it becomes particularly unpleasant when one is faced with the task of coming up with some constructive criticism of a good paper. And Steve Dowrick’s paper on openness and growth is, indeed, a very good one. In such a situation one way out is to spend a lot of time summarising the paper and its main results, but even that road is ...

In this paper, we extend the growth model to include firm-specific technology capital and use it to assess the gains from opening to foreign direct investment. A firm’s technology capital is its unique know-how from investing in research and development, brands, and organization capital. Technology capital is distinguished from other forms of capital in that a firm can use it simultaneously in ...

background & aim: although socio-economic variables are widely used for describing the tourist's behavior, but increasing awareness is evident in current researches that personality characteristics might also be useful for that purpose. in this regard, the present study compares the personality characteristics of iranian tourists with those of non tourists. method and materials: in a causal com...