Jewish emancipation in nineteenth century Europe produced drastically different responses.  In Germany, a liberal variant known as Reform developed, while ultra-Orthodox Judaism emerged in eastern Europe.  We develop a model of religious organization which explains this polarization.  In...

There has been a dramatic surge in Islamic participation and values since the 1970s.  We propose a theory of the contemporary Islamic revival based upon two forms of relative deprivation - envy and unfulfilled aspirations.  To analyze these motivations, a behavioral model of religion is...

When consumers are forward-looking with respect to their demand for a habit-forming good, traditional measures of price elasticity are misleading.  In particular, such measures will underestimate sensitivity to long-run shifts - and therefore underestimate the potential effect of policy...

Edgworth's taxation paradox states that an excise tax can decrease the market price of a good.  This paper presents a new version of the paradox in which a tax reduces price because it attracts entry of additional firms into the market.  The paper also presents two new applications: (i) an...

This paper analyses and quantifies the effects of trade liberalisation and skill-biased technical change, both exogenous and trade-induced, on the skill premium and real wages of unskilled and skilled workers in the Mexican manufacturing sector, using industry- and firm-level data for 1984-1990...

This paper investigates two channels through which research and development (R&D) and human capital may affect regional total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector, using panel data on 159 EU-15 regions from 1992 to 2005.  Based on the endogenous growth model of Griffith,...

The growth process for a technological leader is different from that of a follower. While followers can grow through imitation and capital deepening, a leader must undertake original research. This suggests that as the gap between the leader and the follower narrows, the follower must undertake...

After a dramatic slowdown of the 1970s, productivity growth in UK manufacturing in the 1980s returned to something like its pre-slowdown trend. This paper constructs a quarterly dynamic model of TFP growth in UK manufacturing using cointegration techniques, correcting for a variety of...

We model a War of Attrition with N+K firms competing for N prizes. If firms must pay their full costs until the whole game ends, even after dropping out themselves (as in a standard-setting context), each firms exit time is independent both of K and of other players actions. If, instead, firms...

The growth process for a technological leader is different from that of a follower. While followers can grow through imitation and capital deepening, a leader must undertake original research. This suggests that as the gap between the leader and the follower narrows, the follower must undertake...