We study a dynamic general equilibrium model where innovation takes the form of the introduction new goods, whose production requires skilled workers. Innovation is followed by a costly process of standardization, whereby these new goods are adapted to be produced using unskilled labor. Our...

This article analyzes the effects of intellectual property rights in a quality-ladder model in which incumbent firms preemptively innovate in order to keep their position of leadership. Unlike in models with leapfrogging, granting non-expiring forward protection reduces the rate of innovation...

We construct and estimate a unifi…ed model combining three of the main sources of cross-country income disparities: differences in factor endowments, barriers to technology adoption and the inappropriateness of frontier technologies to local conditions. The key components are different types of...

Sectoral data features (i) changing relative expenditures of different sectors, (ii) non-constancy in relative prices and (iii) long-run trends in relative TFP growth rates across sectors. We provide a tractable theory of industry directed technical change, which is able to reconcile these...

A key aspect of generating new ideas is drawing from different elements of preexisting knowledge and combining them into a new idea. In such a process, the diversity of ideas plays a central role. This paper examines the empirical question of how the internet affected the diversity of new...

This paper examines the evolution of female labor market outcomes from 1987 to 2008 by assessing the role of changing labor demand requirements in four developing countries: Brazil, Mexico, India and Thailand. The results highlight the importance of structural change in reducing gender...

Contrary to most of the literature, which focuses only on the level of investment in innovation, this paper examines both the variety of research projects undertaken and the amount of duplication of research. A characterization of the equilibrium market portfolio of R&D projects and the socially...

This paper argues that the “Economics of Crime” concentrates too much on punishment as a policy to fight crime, which is unwise for several reasons. There are important instances in which punishment simply cannot reduce crime. Several feasible alternatives to punishment exist, such as...

The paper analyzes the effects of more intense competition on firms'incentives to invest in process innovations. We carry out experiments for two-stage games, where R&D investment choices are followed by product market competition. As predicted by theory, an increase in the number of firms from...