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AbstractWe examine the factors behind Afghanistan's persistent underdevelopment. Drawing on various theories of development traps operating at the demographic, economic and institutional levels, we seek to assess whether and to what extent their functioning affects Afghanistan's development. To capture the functioning of development traps empirically, we use several empirical indicators, and we employ non‐linear smooth transition models to evaluate the link between empirical indicators and economic development. We show that Afghanistan is caught in multiple development traps with entwined functioning, creating additional positive feedback loops that impede both the endogenous development of productive capacities and the broader social structural changes.

Permanent self-reproduction of crises or getting into so called development traps in underdeveloped countries constitutes one of the most significant world problems. An explanatory hypothesisis that antagonistic relationship between formal and informal institutions makes it impossible to overcome path dependence. The problem is illustrated by the case of Rwanda, which, despite the large-scale foreign aid in the 1960s-early 1990s, failed to resolve the growing socio-political contradictions that eventually led to the 1994 genocide. However, since the 2000s Rwanda has been demonstrating an upward trend especially in governance and control of corruption. In the author's view, success in the post-genocidal period was determined by two factors: first, by the institutional vacuum created by the collapse of competitive rules and practices of the President Habyarimana era; second, by the effective leadership shown by the ruling elite support of informal practices to overcome the crisis. Between the possible reform options the choice was made in favor of formalization of autochthonous practices, introduction of traditional or restored (filled with a new meaning) institutions into the legal sphere, and creation of new rules. Rwanda is therefore an example of successful institutional transformation.

Hartmann, D., Bezerra, M., Lodolo, B., & Pinheiro, F. L. (2020). International trade, development traps, and the core-periphery structure of income inequality. Economia, 21(2), 255-278. [Advanced online publication on 19 December 2019]. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econ.2019.09.0011 ; Research on economic complexity has shown that a country's type of exports conditions its future path of economic diversification and economic growth. Yet little emphasis has been put on the inequality associated with the types of products traded between countries and different regions of the world. Here we analyze the income inequality associated with the imports and exports of 116 countries in the period from 1970 to 2010. Our analysis shows that methods from network science and visual complexity research can help to reevaluate old theories in economics, such as core-periphery structures in international trade or structural development traps. Our results illustrate that the core-periphery structure of global trade affects not only the income inequality between countries, but also the income inequality within countries. Moreover, they reveal the structural constraints that developing and emerging economies face in promoting inclusive growth and benchmark their productive transformations with cases of successful catching up and developed economies. The results show that countries, such as South Korea or Germany, have benefited from outsourcing high inequality products. In contrast, some middle-income countries, such as Brazil or South Africa, face structural development constraints consisting of a large average distance of their export products to low inequality products and a "gravitational force" towards high inequality products. Finally, developing economies, such as Nicaragua or Sri Lanka face a double development trap for inclusive growth, as their economies depend on both a large share of high inequality exports and imports. ; publishersversion ; published