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African Export Successes: Surprises, Stylized Facts, and Explanations

Easterly, William; Reshef, Ariell - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

We establish the following stylized facts: (1) Exports are characterized by Big Hits, (2) the Big Hits change from one period to the next, and (3) these changes are not explained by global factors like global commodity prices. These conclusions are robust to excluding extractable products (oil...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008765616

The Geography of Crowdfunding

Agrawal, Ajay K.; Goldfarb, Avi; Catalini, Christian - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

Perhaps the most striking feature of "crowdfunding" is the broad geographic dispersion of investors in small, early-stage projects. This contrasts with existing theories that predict entrepreneurs and investors will be co-located due to distance-sensitive costs. We examine a crowdfunding setting...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008855521

University Research, Industrial R&D, and the Anchor Tenant Hypothesis

Agrawal, Ajay K.; Cockburn, Iain M. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2002

innovation system,' and these appear to vary markedly in their ability to convert local academic research into local commercial … innovation. We develop and test the hypothesis that the presence of a large, local, R&D-intensive firm an anchor tenant' enhances … the productivity of local innovation systems by making local university research more likely to be absorbed by and to …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005718229

Brain Drain or Brain Bank? The Impact of Skilled Emigration on Poor-Country Innovation

Agrawal, Ajay K.; McHale, John; Kapur, Devesh - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

The development prospects of a poor country depend in part on its capacity for innovation. The productivity of its …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005777387

Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?

Comin, Diego; Easterly, William; Gong, Erick - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006

We assemble a dataset on technology adoption in 1000 B.C., 0 A.D., and 1500 A.D. for the predecessors to today's nation states. We find that this very old history of technology adoption is surprisingly significant for today's national development outcomes. Although our strongest results are for...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005575665

Superpower Interventions and their Consequences for Democracy: An Empirical Inquiry

Easterly, William; Satyanath, Shanker; Berger, Daniel - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

Do superpower interventions to install and prop up political leaders in other countries subsequently result in more or less democracy, and does this effect vary depending on whether the intervening superpower is democratic or authoritarian? While democracy may be expected to decline...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005720545

Can the West Save Africa?

Easterly, William - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort towards Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts the predominant "transformational" approach...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005777960

Tropics, Germs, and Crops: How Endowments Influence Economic Development

Easterly, William; Levine, Ross - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2002

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005049894

The European Origins of Economic Development

Easterly, William; Levine, Ross - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012

Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes, researchers have been unable to directly assess these predictions because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. In...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010821800

Recruiting for Ideas: How Firms Exploit the Prior Inventions of New Hires

Agrawal, Ajay K.; Singh, Jasjit - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2010

When firms recruit inventors, they acquire not only the use of their skills but also enhanced access to their stock of ideas. But do hiring firms actually increase their use of the new recruits' prior inventions? Our estimates suggest they do, quite significantly in fact, by approximately 202%...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008628413