The catchup and convergence of developing economies with the Western world is a major experience in modern history. In this paper we explore the role played by a gradual trade liberalization in a product cycle model. In contrast to the literature on product cycles, which had so far derived...

This note describes the effects on human capital formation of rank-order tournaments offering identical prizes to a given share of the ranked contestants. This compensation scheme is thought to resemble the selection processes in different areas of the public administration, particularly in...

This paper presents a model accounting for the impact of the Chinese rural-urban migration on the stock of aggregate saving and the skill composition of the urban labor force. The novel mechanism through which immigration affects labor-market outcomes is the availability of new loanable funds...

This paper proposes a 2-country 3-region economic geography model that can account for the most salient stylized facts experienced by Eastern European transition economies during the period 1990-2003. In contrast to the existing literature, which has favored technological explanations, trade...

This paper gives both theoretical arguments and econometric support to the notion of optimal FDI levels, from the viewpoint of human-capital formation in the host country. The optimality of a limited FDI level depends on the local incentives to get trained. Those incentives are formed in the...

This paper proposes a 2-country 3-region economic geography model that can account for the most salient stylized facts experienced by Eastern European transition economies during the period 1990-2005. In contrast to the existing literature, which has favored technological explanations, trade...