When asked to name one proposition in the social sciences that is both true and non-trivial, Paul Samuelson famously replied: 'Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage'. Truth, however, in Samuelson's reply refers to the fact that Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage is mathematically...

We investigate how increases in publication delays have affected the life-cycle of publications of recent Ph.D. graduates in economics. We construct a panel dataset of 14,271 individuals who were awarded Ph.D.s between 1986 and 2000 in US and Canadian economics departments. For this population...

This study constructs a large new dataset to investigate whether state policy led to ethnic Ukrainians experiencing higher mortality during the 1932-33 Soviet Great Famine. All else equal, famine (excess) mortality rates were positively associated with ethnic Ukrainian population share across...

This paper considers the impact of macroeconomic and microeconomic policy tools on enterprise activities within an economy in the process of economic reform. Assuming a dual exchange rate regime and the type of increased enterprise autonomy introduced as components of partial economic reform as...

This paper studies structural transformation of Soviet Russia in 1928-1940 from an agrarian to an industrial economy through the lens of a two-sector neoclassical growth model. We construct a large dataset that covers Soviet Russia during 1928-1940 and Tsarist Russia during 1885-1913. We use a...

Over the last three decades there has been a dramatic increase in the length of time necessary to publish a paper in a top economics journal. This paper documents the slowdown and notes that a substantial part is due to an increasing tendency of journals to require that papers be extensively...

This paper estimates the nature and magnitude of the local externalities from own industry scale, as envisioned by Marshall. Census panel data on individual plants in high-tech and machinery industries across up to 487 countries are utilized, to quantify the direct effects of local external...