Abstract The paper considers formally the mapping from distortions in the allocations of resources across firms to aggregate productivity. TFP gaps are characterized as the integral of a strictly concave function with respect to an employment-weighted measure of distortions. Size related...

It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations which benefit society largely through their use as building blocks to future inventions may require a different scope of protection in order to be encouraged. We model the problem...

This paper characterizes the effects of market size on the size distribution of establishments for thirteen retail trade industries across 225 U.S. cities. In nearly every industry we examine, establishments are larger in larger cities, and in four industries the dispersion of establishment...

Why don't poor countries adopt more productive technologies? Is there a role for policies that coordinate technology adoption? To answer these questions, we develop a quantitative model that features complementarity in firms' technology adoption decisions: The gains from adoption are larger when...

What are the effects of a temporary lockdown of the economy? Do firms' deteriorating balance sheets and labor market frictions propagate and prolong the effects? We answer these questions in a model with financial and labor market frictions. The model makes quantitative predictions about the...

We propose a theory linking imperfect information to resource misallocation and hence to aggregate productivity and output. In our setup, firms look to a variety of noisy information sources when making input decisions. We devise a novel empirical strategy that uses a combination of firm-level...

This paper examines the influence of transportation infrastructure on migration decisions in the context of the Great Migration in the United States. Focusing on the opening of the Panama Canal in 1920, we isolate the effect of improved economic opportunities from reduced migration costs. Using...

We examine the role of trust in financial institutions as a necessary condition for the wider use of formal financial services by the poor. We randomly assigned beneficiaries of a conditional cash transfer program in 130 villages in Peru to attend a 3.5 hour training session designed to build...

We study a propaganda campaign sponsored by the government against the main political challenger in the days preceding the 2015 Argentine runoff presidential election. Subjects in the treatment group watched an "ad" initially aired during soccer transmissions that was part of this campaign and...

Strategies based on growth and inequality reduction require a long-run horizon, and this paper therefore argues that those strategies need to be complemented by poverty alleviation programs. With regards to such programs, informality in Latin America and the Caribbean is a primary obstacle to...