This special edition of Ensayos sobre Política Económica (ESPE) is focused on unbalanced growth process, structural changes and technology dissemination. In particular, the papers in this edition contribute to increasing our understanding about the causes, consequences and public policies of an economic growth process in which not all sectors and regions grow at the same pace, or which is characterized by reallocation of resources across economic sectors. Including those characteristics into the growth models helps to understand a variety of aggregate results in terms of economic development, regional economic convergence, aggregate productivity trends, hours worked, economic inequality, among others.
The structural transformation that results from the growth process is inseparably linked to spatial and regional disparities. Furthermore, regional demand patterns affect growth in the region, occupational structure and employment dynamics, infrastructure, among other factors. Analyzing these links helps our understanding of the regional characteristics that bring or limit economic growth; what factors contribute to regional differences in living standards and productivity; what forces drive regional growth.
The six articles presented in this special issue cover a wide variety of topics. Romilio Labra (Centro de Genómica Nutricional Agroacuícola, Chile), Juan A Rock (Universidad de Talca, Chile) and Isabel Álvarez (Universidad Complutense, Madrid), study the role of natural resources in economic growth, initially for a cross section of countries and then to the specific case of Chile. Adrián de León, and Irving J Llamosas-Rosas (Universidad de Guadalajara, México), examine the relation between trade liberalization and the industrial labor productivity growth in the northern border states of Mexico, in order to contribute to the analysis of the impact of trade integration in regional economic growth. David Hincapie and Osmar Loaiza (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin), study regional inequalities in educational performance of secondary basic education in Colombia for the period 2007–2012. Then, Julián Andrés Villamil and Gustavo Hernández (Departamento Nacional de Planeación) use different methodologies to identify linkages, industry clusters and workflows in the Colombian economy. Carlos Humberto Ortiz and Diana Marcela Jiménez (Universidad del Valle) examine whether the vision of Adam Smith on economic growth is consistent with the experience of growth in Colombia during the period 1955–2012. Finally, Carlos Andrés Brando (Universidad de los Andes) studies the structure and dynamics of institutionalized flows of credit between economic sectors – with a distinct emphasis on industry – during the era of import-substitution industrialization in Colombia.
The call for papers of this special edition was released in October 2014. Many papers on this topic were received, and after careful evaluations, the selected papers were announced in early September 2015. Associated with this special edition, we had the ESPE annual conference in October 2015, in which the selected documents were presented to the public. The conference had two renowned international academics: Francesco Caselli, professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Omer Moav, professor of economics at University of Warwick. Professor Caselli addressed the issue of power struggles and the natural resources curse and Professor Moav presented a paper on the Neolithic roots of economic institutions.
We hope that this special edition will encourage the discussion and interest in issues related to economic growth, and become an invitation to national and international researchers to continue working in this direction.
Finally, we would like to thank Julian Parra, editor in chief of ESPE, and the Department of Communication and Education in Economics and Finance of the Banco de la Republica, particularly the external relationships and the graphic design and electronic media teams.