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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

Entry and Patenting in the Software Industry

Cockburn, Iain M.; MacGarvie, Megan - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006

To what extent are firms kept out of a market by patents covering related technologies? Do patents held by potential entrants make it easier to enter markets? We estimate the empirical relationship between market entry and patents for 27 narrowly defined categories of software products during...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005720371

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

Scale, Scope and Spillovers: The Determinants of Research Productivity in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Cockburn, Iain M.; Henderson, Rebecca - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1993

This paper presents the results of a study of the determinants of research productivity in the pharmaceutical industry. Using disaggregated, internal firm data at the research program level from ten major pharmaceutical companies, we find no evidence of increasing returns to scale at either the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005829793

Are All Patent Examiners Equal? The Impact of Examiner Characteristics

Cockburn, Iain M.; Kortum, Samuel; Stern, Scott - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2002

Building on insights gained from interviewing administrators and patent examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), we collect and analyze a novel dataset on patent examiners and patent outcomes. This dataset is based on 182 patents for which the Court of Appeals for the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005777515

Public & Private Spillovers, Location and the Productivity of Pharmaceutical Research

Kyle, Margaret K.; Cockburn, Iain M.; Furman, Jeffrey L.; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006

While there is widespread agreement among economists and management scholars that knowledge spillovers exist and have important economic consequences, researchers know substantially less about the "micro mechanisms" of spillovers -- about the degree to which they are geographically localized,...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005778773

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