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Purpose: Is there a secret recipe for economic growth? Design/methodology/approach: No, there is no recipe, but we can extrapolate some pieces of advice from Adam Smith. Findings: An economy can leave behind its 'dull' stagnant state and grow when its markets expand, when the productivity of its workers increases thanks to high compensations, which are seen as incentives to work harder and when lobbying and cronyism are kept at bay. Luck plays a role too, but these three ingredients are necessary, even if not sufficient, for an economy to grow and thus be 'cheerful.' Originality/value: These three aspects - expansion of market, liberal compensation of workers and lobbying - especially combined, have often been underestimated in Smith's understanding of the possible sources of economic growth.

Bolivia's informal economic sector is the largest in Latin America and has been attributed to many factors including the burden of regulations, the weakness of public institutions, and the lack of perceived benefits to formality. 'Increasing Formality and Productivity of Bolivian Firms' presents fresh qualitative and quantitative analyses to help understand the reasons why firms are informal and the impact of formalization on their profitability, in order to better inform appropriate policies. A crucial finding of the study is that the impact of tax registration on profitability depends on firm size and the ability to issue tax receipts. The smallest and largest firms have lower profits as a result of tax registration because their cost of formalizing exceeds benefits. The study concludes by recommending policy priorities to increase the benefits of formalization through information, training, access to credit and markets, and business support. Longer-term policy recommendations include simplifying formalization, regulatory, and taxation procedures and reducing their costs, as well as measures to boost the productivity of small and micro firms.

Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) physical geography is often blamed for its poor economic performance. A country's geographical location does, however, not only determine its agricultural conditions or disease environment. It also pins down a country's relative position vis-à-vis other countries, affecting its ease of access to foreign markets. This paper assesses the importance of market access for manufactures in explaining the observed income differences between SSA countries over the period 1993–2009. We construct yearly, theory-based measures of each SSA country's market access using the information contained in bilateral manufacturing trade flows. Using these measures, we find a robust positive effect of market access on economic development that has increased in importance during the last decade. Interestingly, when further unraveling this finding, access to other SSA markets in particular turns out to be important.

The authors confront complexness and rigour of EU directives on public procurement vis-à-vis broad wording of international agreements concluded within EU neighbourhood policy. The firs reason for this comparison is ongoing spread of prin­ciples of the EU law to the third countries. The second reason is that both rely on the same goals: access to market ad fair environment via transparency because these prin­ciples constitute a subtle legal basis for public procurement legislation at all. Finally, these approaches were compared to the approaches employed in recent FTAs - CETA and EUSFTA. This paper is an output in a project granted by APVV-17-0641: Improvement of effective­ness of legal regulation of public procurement within EU law context

This study estimates the benefits that Indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called Reuters Market Light (RML). We conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of Maharashtra. Treated farmers associate RML information with a number of decisions they have made, and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbitrage and crop grading. But the magnitude of these effects is small. We find no statistically significant average effect of treatment on the price received by farmers, crop value-added, crop losses resulting from rainstorms, or the likelihood of changing crop varieties and cultivation practices. Although disappointing, these results are in line with the market take-up rate of the RML service in the study districts, which shows small numbers of clients in aggregate and a relative stagnation in take-up over the study period.

Naturally monopolistic network industries such as railways, water and sewage, district heating and electricity infrastructure etc. are often subject to economic regulation in order to avoid wasteful duplication and to restrict monopolistic behaviour in the industry. A variety of different regulatory approaches have emerged as a result. The volume of empirical studies on the effects of economic regulation is increasing, yet the application of results to different environments is limited due to very context-based nature of regulatory instruments and interactions. In order to support more active analysis of local circumstances, this paper systematises and presents the institutional framework and practices of economic regulation of network industries in Estonia in a comprehensive manner. The authors analyse the composition of relevant industry sectors, the evolution of legislation and sector-specific regulators. Individual regulated services in different network industries are identified, detailed regulatory practices elaborated on, and volume of regulatory decisions is compiled accordingly.

Clinical endpoints relevant for relative effectiveness assessment (REA) reflect how patients feel, function, or survive. Outcome data requested by health technology assessment (HTA) bodies in Europe to support reimbursement of an anticancer drug are based on final endpoints coming from completed comparative phase 3 trials; overall survival improvement is the preferred criterion for the demonstration of the patient benefit in this field. Recent arrival of new treatments that target identified functional genetic mutations (\"targeted therapies\") or PD-1/PD-L1,2 axis (\"immunotherapies\") and their combinations have profoundly changed treatment strategies in cancers as they considerably improve patient survival, but also raise new challenges in REA and decision-making process in Europe as compared to the REA of \"classical\" chemotherapies. In addition, recent regulatory initiatives to support accelerated clinical development and approval of innovative cancer immunotherapies based on non-final endpoints, such as priority medicines through the European Medicines Agency, represent an additional challenge for HTA bodies and decision makers. In order to support adequate data generation for REA of anticancer drugs and especially for drugs candidates for accelerated assessment and early access to market, a close and open dialog of all stakeholders involved in development of such drugs is crucial.

The private sector is the engine of economic growth, stimulating entrepreneurship and innovation and promoting competition and productivity. While many countries in Africa have developed private sector-driven growth strategies, private investment as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) is only 13 percent in Africa, significantly lower than in other regions, such as South Asia, with many low-income countries. The public sector still occupies the lion's share of economic activity in Africa. This study addresses how industrial clusters could be a springboard for the development of Africa's micro and small enterprise sector, which constitutes the bulk of the region's indigenous private sector. The successful development of industrial clusters in Asia illustrates how small enterprises can help to drive growth led by market expansion at home and abroad.

Motivated by the increasing interest in sustainable agriculture and the potential benefits associated with organic certification, this study employs a multidimensional fixed-effects model to analyze data derived from onsite surveys conducted among 681 apple farmers in the Loess Plateau region of China to explore the influence of organic certification on absolute and relative agricultural product prices given online market access. The findings indicated a significant increase in apple prices among farmers who held organic certifications and engaged in online market sales, with prices rising by CNY1.60 per half kilogram. Additionally, this study highlights that the amalgamation of organic certification with online market access significantly enhances agricultural product prices by facilitating better dissemination of market information among farmers. Furthermore, this research addresses a critical gap in the existing literature by clarifying the differential impact of organic certification across distinct farmer demographics and geographical regions. The more pronounced positive impact of organic certification on prices observed among cooperative members and farmers in the low-altitude areas is particularly noteworthy. These results underscore the crucial role of online market access in achieving premium effects and price stability for organically certified products.

Naturally monopolistic network industries such as railways, water and sewage, district heating and electricity infrastructure etc. are often subject to economic regulation in order to avoid wasteful duplication and to restrict monopolistic behaviour in the industry. A variety of different regulatory approaches have emerged as a result. The volume of empirical studies on the effects of economic regulation is increasing, yet the application of results to different environments is limited due to very context-based nature of regulatory instruments and interactions. In order to support more active analysis of local circumstances, this paper systematises and presents the institutional framework and practices of economic regulation of network industries in Estonia in a comprehensive manner. The authors analyse the composition of relevant industry sectors, the evolution of legislation and sector-specific regulators. Individual regulated services in different network industries are identified, detailed regulatory practices elaborated on, and volume of regulatory decisions is compiled accordingly. Keywords: economic regulation, access to market regulation, price regulation, natural monopoly, network industry DOI: 10.3176/tr.2014.3.02