This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity, when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative...

This paper develops an open economy model with heterogeneous final goods producers who simultaneously choose whether to export their goods and whether to use imported intermediates. The model highlights mechanisms whereby import policies affect aggregate productivity, resource allocation, and...

This paper examines the role of both cost-sharing schemes in health insurance systems and entry regulation for pharmaceutical R&D expenditure, drug prices, aggregate productivity, and income. The analysis suggests that both an increase in the coinsurance rate and stricter price regulations...

We use a new dataset on non-resource GDP to examine the performance of commodity-exporting countries in terms of macroeconomic stability and economic growth in a panel of up to 129 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main findings are threefold. First, we find that overall government...

Judged by the principle of intertemporal Pareto optimality, insecure property rights and the greenhouse effect both imply overly rapid extraction of fossil carbon resources. A gradual expansion of demand-reducing public policies – such as increasing ad-valorem taxes on carbon consumption or...

This paper adopts an instrumental variable approach to uncover the impact of variations in minimum temperature on emergence and severity of actual violence through the effect on food availability, captured by rice crops per capita. The link between increase in minimum temperature and rice crops...

We study backstop adoption and carbon dioxide emission paths in a two-region model with unilateral climate policy and non-renewable resource consumption. The regions have an equal endowment of the internationally tradable resource and a backstop technology. We first study the case of a...

We propose a development-compatible refunding system designed to mitigate climate change. Industrial countries pay an initial fee into a global fund. Each country chooses its national carbon tax. Part of the global fund is refunded to developing and industrial countries, in proportion to the...

For a country fractionalized in competing factions, each owning part of the stock of natural exhaustible resources, or with insecure property rights, we analyze how resources are transformed into productive capital to sustain consumption. We allow property rights to improve as the country...