The paper examines the employment and unemployment implications of permitting unemployed people to use part of their unemployment benefits to provide employment vouchers to the firms that hire them. This opportunity to transfer unemployment benefits, `benefit transfers', would help replace the...

The paper describes the insights which trade theory can provide into economic developments in Ireland during the 1930s. First, a version of Ronald Jones's "specific factors" model is applied to the period after 1932, when a policy which combined industrial tariff protection and controls on...

The conditions under which young workers find their first real post-graduation jobs are both very important for the young’ future careers and insufficiently documented given their potential importance for young workers welfare. To study these conditions, and in particular the role played by...

Recent research demonstrates that imperfect information about returns to education distorts schooling investments. Questions remain about what information is missing in different settings and for whom such information is most critical. We conducted a field experiment to investigate whether Grade...

Empirical evidence suggests that sectoral export growth decreases exporters' survival probability, whereas non--exporters are unaffected. Models with firm heterogeneity in total factor productivity predict the opposite. To solve this puzzle, we develop a two--factor framework where firms differ...

We analyze the joint dynamics of religious beliefs, scientific progress and coalitional politics along both religious and economic lines. History offers many examples of the recurring tensions between science and organized religion, but as part of the paper’s motivating evidence we also...

To what extent has Sub-Saharan Africa’s slow economic growth over the past five decades been due to price and trade policies that have discouraged production of agricultural relative to non-agricultural tradables? This paper uses a new set of estimates of policy distortions to relative prices...

We model technological and financial innovation as reflecting the decisions of profit maximizing agents and explore the implications for economic growth. We start with a Schumpeterian endogenous growth model where entrepreneurs earn monopoly profits by inventing better goods and financiers arise...

We develop a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles. In this model, financial frictions lead to equilibrium dispersion in the rates of return to investment. During bubbly episodes, relatively inefficient investors demand bubbles while relatively efficient investors supply them. Because...

In many western democracies, political parties with extreme platforms challenge more moderate incumbents. This paper analyses the impact of economic growth on the support for extreme political platforms. We provide a theoretical argument in favor of growth effects (as opposed to level effects)...