Should privately informed agents with diverging interests act independently or should they commit to a mechanism? This paper analyzes different communication and decision protocols when communication involves delay. It studies under which conditions agents should (i) choose their actions...

We document significant and robust empirical relationships in cross-country panel data between government size or social expenditure on the one hand, and trade and financial development indicators on the other. Across countries, deeper economic integration is associated with more intense...

Economic integration fosters production efficiency by enhancing market competition, and makes it difficult for National governments to conduct independent fiscal policies and to enforce income redistribution schemes. Controlling for country-level income variation, available data suggest that...

This paper describes some of the ways in which mineral rents and their management influence economic growth and other determinants of growth as well as some of the reasons why many mineral-rich countries have not managed very well to divert their resource rents to furthering economic and social...

Kilauea volcano is the largest stationary source of SO2 pollution in the United States of America. Moreover, the SO2 that the volcano emits eventually forms particulate matter, another major pollutant. We use this exogenous source of pollution variation to estimate the impact of particulate...

This paper addresses the relationship between patent protection and investment in the development of new pharmaceutical treatments. The TRIPS Agreement, which specifies minimum levels of intellectual property protection for countries in the World Trade Organization, has increased levels of...