Technological advance is often embodied in capital inputs. This paper develops a model where capital innovations occur on two margins: (1) vertically, where a capital input becomes more productive at a given task; and (2) horizontally, where a capital input replaces labor at a given task. These...

This paper investigates a unique policy designed to maintain employment during the privatization of East German firms after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The policy required new owners of the firms to commit to employment targets, with penalties for non-compliance. Using a dynamic model, we...

In an effort to measure and track marine-dependent economic activities, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed two statistical tools: The Economics: National Ocean Watch (ENOW) and the Marine Economy Satellite Account (MESA). In both efforts, the...

Society's transition toward more sustainable energy sources is well underway. But substantially reducing the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, to power vehicles, and to manufacture the stuff of everyday life will profoundly disrupt the communities that currently dedicate themselves to...

This paper studies the cross-country patterns of risky innovation and growth through the lens of international trade. We use a simple theoretical framework of risky quality upgrading by firms under varying levels of financial development to derive two predictions. First, the mean rate of quality...

Economic models provide little insight into when the next big idea and its associated productivity dividend will come along. Once a general purpose technology (GPT) is identified, the economist's toolkit does provide an understanding when firms will adopt a new technology and for what purpose....

The expansion in farm size is an important contributor to agricultural productivity in developed countries, but the reallocation process is hindered in less developed economies. How do distortions to factor reallocation affect farm dynamics and agricultural productivity? We develop a model of...

We use data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geography of investments in robots across U.S. manufacturing establishments. We find that robotics adoption and robot intensity (the number of robots per employee) is much more strongly related to establishment...

How are inventors allocated in the US economy and does that allocation affect innovative capacity? To answer these questions, we first build a model of creative destruction where an inventor with a new idea has the possibility to work for an entrant or incumbent firm. If the inventor works for...

Innovation is a key driver of long run economic growth. Studying innovation requires a clear view of the characteristics and behavior of the individuals that create new ideas. A general lack of rich, large-scale data has constrained such analyses. We address this by introducing a new dataset...