TResearch by J.D. Sachs and A.M. Warner, indicates that resource-rich countries are less successful in terms of economic growth than are resource-poor countries. The question of what measures Icelanders need to take to prevent their fishery wealth from limiting economic growth is posed. The main...

Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

Setting a price that results in rationing may be optimal for a seller whose customers must make a specific investment to be able to use its product. Rationing results in ex-post inefficiency, but the resulting distribution of ex-post surplus can compensate consumers for their...

In order to gain more insight into the relationship between housing prices and mortgage lending, we estimate models for both the Dutch housing and the mortgage market. The empirical analysis presented in this paper offers support for the hypothesis that in the Netherlands housing prices and...

Longer patents to small inventors may accelerate genetic research with distant payoffs by assuaging their fears that a large, low-cost rival would quickly appropriate profits.

We study the implementation of constrained-efficient allocations in labour markets where a basic coordination problem leads to an equilibrium matching function. We argue that these allocations can be achieved in equilibrium if wages are determined by ex post bidding. This holds true even in...

The journal acquisition budget of libraries is not increasing at the same rate as subscription rates creating the serials' crisis. Many solutions have been proposed including the freely available electronic journal. However, all the solutions suffer the same Faustian Grip - namely that the...

The diffusion of health care technology is influenced by both the total market share of managed care organizations as well as the level of competition among them. This paper differentiates between HMO penetration and competition and examines their relationship to the adoption of cardiac...

GOOD HEALTH IS A CRUCIAL PART OF WELL-BEING BUT SPENDING ON HEALTH CAN BE JUSTIFIED ON ECONOMIC GROUNDS. THE GOAL OF REDUCING POVERTY PROVIDES A DIFFERENT BUT EQUALLY POWERFUL CASE FOR HEALTH INVESTMENTS. HOWEVER, IF POLICYMAKERS ARE TO ACCELERATE THE SUBSTANTIAL HEALTH GAINS OF RECENT DECADES,...

Although a number of studies have been conducted on health production functions, little attention has been given to pharmaceuticals as a separate input into the production of health. Building upon existing published work, this paper uses an alternative specification and more recent data to...