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François Perroux was an economist of strong convictions and fruitful ideas. His belief, which was also shared by other eminent development economists of his time, that backwardness was not a fate is entirely reflected in his development pole theory, which has a prominent place within the regional development theory. This implies that his theory was highly influential, as evidenced by the fact that strategies based on development poles were implemented around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Although these strategies took different forms, largely depending on the specific contexts in which they were applied, there was a common factor in all of them, which was the importance of the direct use of large-scale investment resources to generate the hoped-for structural changes through accelerated economic growth. Looking carefully at the Italian and Brazilian cases, it should be noted that the development pole strategies had, in addition to the use of heavy investment resources already mentioned, some common characteristics, such as: the focus of attention directed toward the backward regions, specifically the Mezzogiorno region in Italy and the Amazon region in Brazil; the fight against regional disparities within both countries through structural change and the strengthening of backward regional economies as an underlying reason; and the active participation of the State in the drawing up and implementation processes of development poles. This chapter aims at comparing the development pole strategies in Italy and Brazil, highlighting similarities and differences of these experiences in triggering the long-awaited regional development.

This introduction frames the papers in this volume with a brief critique of how and why the dominant approaches to understanding world affairs obscure our understanding of the chief developments that have marked our age, and a discussion of the resources geopolitical economy can draw on to address the resulting deficiencies of understanding. It then goes on to discuss how the papers that follow demonstrate the gains from putting the geopolitical economy framework to work. They interrogate and challenge conventional wisdom in three broad areas – the international monetary system, world trade and the requirements for successful combined development historically and today, when China’s own stunning combined development confronts other developing countries with new possibilities and constraints. The introduction closes with some necessarily brief reflections on the vast agenda for future research and discussion that remains to be tackled.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The aim of the chapter is to identify the pattern of city–region relations in Polish spatial and economic development. Based on the regression analysis of GDP per capita growth in chosen cities and their regions, conclusions are drawn on: differences in urban development (measured by GDP per capita growth) between cities and their surrounding regions and the direction of the core-periphery mechanism (backwash vs. spread). Findings of the research enabled us to answer the questions of whether urban Poland follows the core-periphery model of development, and to identify the stage of this theoretical approach at which Polish cities might be. For the majority of studies, cities and regions follow the backwash mechanism in their relations with the surrounding regions; however, the trend of this impact differs. Warsaw is a city where the dependence on its region’s resources is decreasing; nevertheless, other findings presented in the chapter allow the statement that Polish cities reach for their region’s resources and the core-periphery mechanism is characterised by the backwash effect. The following chapter fills in the gap in urban competitiveness studies, as they usually concentrate on specific case studies and rarely use larger panels for analysis. Such approach enables us to draw conclusions for the overall urban development patterns in Poland. Also, the issue of growth spread and city–region relations is rarely found in the Polish urban research.

The rules of the economic development game have changed. Companies were the force behind the old game. Cities and suburbs gauged their status by the number of corporate headquarters within their borders. Economic developers used financial and other incentives to lure companies to their communities. Now, however, people are the center of the action. High human capital individuals – or as we like to call them, talent – are the key to success in this new era of economic growth. Their ideas and creativity are the most important ingredients in the economic success of a firm or region.

Purpose – To provide a general theory for how the ancient Mesoamerican economy functioned.

Design/methods/approach – First the chapter describes formally the sectors or operations of the economy: production, consumption, labor, specialization, exchange and prices, savings and investment, credit, quasi-money, markets, and dynamics. Then it relates this economy to its Mesoamerican cultural context.

Findings – Much but not all of this economy, with its great volume of transactions, worked according to market principles, without coinage or state-fiat money yet not barter. The theory has testable implications. Periods of growth and decline in preindustrial urban societies could have been due to economic forces.

Research limitations/implications – The presentation is verbal, not mathematical. Precolumbian economic documents hardly exist; advances in this line of research will have to come from archaeology (in part informed by earliest contact-era history).

Social implications – Extending theories of money and markets to include preindustrial urban societies should deepen and enrich economic thinking generally.

Originality/value of chapter – The first nonsubstantivist model of the Mesoamerican economy; insights on specialization and competition when firms are households; how high volumes of exchange work with commodity monies.

We consider the well-known and painful problem of countries, mainly in the developing world, that suffer not only from low levels of economic development, but also from high levels of inequality and poverty. They struggle to solve their development problems by implementing various policies for economic growth (investing in infrastructures and education, providing incentives for capital investments, etc.), but in many cases it seems that economic growth, even when it is achieved, does not necessarily resolve the fundamental problems of poverty and unequal income distribution (Selowsky, 1981; Cardoso & Helwege, 1992).

The unequal distribution of economic activities, transposed in economic, social and territorial disparities is the general characteristic of the European economy. Gaps increased in the context of European Union (EU) enlargement towards Eastern and Central Europe and of the economic crisis, thus bringing new differentiations among member states’ economies. The main aim of the chapter is to emphasise the centre-periphery differentiations in the European economy, by using a composite index of peripherality, in order to better understand the determinants of growth and convergence in Central and Eastern European countries and to reach normative conclusions for increasing Cohesion Policy (CP) effectiveness. The first part of the chapter provides a short overview of the main theories and models of the peripherality analysis and the relationships between the centre and the periphery, in order to find out how this analysis relates to the research in the field. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of European economies during 2003–2014, in order to find out whether the EU enlargement process stabilised the EU core-periphery pattern or, on the contrary, the process of core-periphery structural convergence occurred. The third part includes the suggested model of analysis (methodology, data, and main results) from a multidisciplinary perspective, underlining the centre-periphery differentiations on the two axes, North–South and West–East. The results have been interpreted in conclusions, with a focus on their relevance for the European CP challenges.

In this introductory chapter, we briefly outline the history of the political economy of raw materials, focusing particularly on the relationship between raw materials and economic development. We then introduce the chapters of this volume, and we conclude by discussing future directions for research in this area.