The article empirically analyses the relationship between real exchange rate (RER) and growth rate of output. We first estimate the effect of the index of RER undervaluation on the rate of output growth in two samples of countries from 1978 to 2007. Our contribution is the use of a different dataset that increases the number of countries in the sample, as well as the number of available control variables. In doing so, the article adds to the literature by applying a method that allows for the control of income levels (quantile regressions). So, we present new findings on a non‐linear relationship the RER‐growth nexus. We conclude that maintaining a competitive level of RER has positive effects on growth rate.

This paper examines the importance of output growth and research intensity for productivity growth. Two hypotheses are tested. First, the paper investigates the impact of the two variables on productivity growth when simultaneously considered, assessing whether the basic Kaldorian and Schumpeterian models can be combined. Second, it examines whether research intensity impacts on the magnitude of returns to scale, assessing if countries with higher research intensity benefit from higher returns to scale. The tests reported in the paper provide strong evidence of the importance of demand growth for productivity growth, and on the existence of increasing returns to scale in manufacturing, while also recognizing the relevance of research intensity for productivity growth. Most importantly, the test results suggest that research intensity has a more relevant impact on the magnitude of returns to scale than on productivity growth directly.

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This paper presents a new methodology to describe global innovations networks. Using 167,315 USPTO patents granted in 2009 and the papers they cited, this methodology shows ''scientific footprints of technology'' that cross national boundaries, and how multinational enterprises interact globally with universities and other firms. The data and the map of these flows provide insights to support a tentative taxonomy of global innovation networks.

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The article assesses the work of Celso Furtado (1920-2004) in the 1970s, when the author promotes an ambitious attempt to redefine the field of development economics. Furtado's works have recently been revisited by several authors, including in the field of history of economic thought. The text is devoted to explore how the author challenges development theory's perceived failure to explain the reality of underdeveloped nations in the late 1970s by expanding the scope of analysis and giving culture a pivotal role in the dynamics of development and underdevelopment. This theoretical movement happens at the time in which development economics begins to drift out of the mainstream of economic theory. Hence, unlike the concept of underdevelopment introduced in the 1950s, the discussion of creativity and dependence encounters an adverse intellectual landscape, even though it represents one of the author's most original contributions.

This paper expands the product space methodology to analyse the relationship between structural change, economic complexity and distinct paths of economic development. To do so, it presents product space networks for each decade since the 1960's and analyses revealed comparative (dis)advantages indictors for Brazil and South Korea from the 1960s to 2000s. The exercise renders two main findings. First, it shows significant changes of the international division of labour and trade as well as each of the countries' trade evolution in terms of comparative advantages in products classified by technological-intensity. Secondly, the indexes of revealed comparative advantage and disadvantage to analyse economies' diversification, bottlenecks, and complexity show that although having similar initial per capita GDPs, South Korea achieved faster growth than Brazil by specialising early on higher complexity, technology-intensive goods and services. This shows that growth and development is highly path dependent and contingent on production complexity.

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