The diffusion of new technologies is their adoption by different economic agents at different times. A classical concern in the diffusion of technologies (Griliches 1957) is the importance of raw technical progress versus economic forces. We examine this classical issue in a modern market, web...

The shape of short run marginal cost (SRMC) is critical to understanding pricing behavior over the business cycle. We construct an econometric model of output and price determination for an industry with steep SRMC around capacity. In the North American aluminum industry, the capacity constraint...

This paper devises new methods for measuring firms' sunk costs and their effect on market structure. It builds on our earlier work that estimated the size of unobserved fixed costs from entry thresholds, the amount of market demand necessary to support a new entrant. Here we show that...

This paper studies an unusually rich data set of all the 1473 applications to the NSF in economics during 1985-1990. It provides a rare opportunity to analyze not only the characteristics of the researchers whose application was accepted (414 applications in our sample), but also those whose...

This paper estimates the "production function" for scientific research publications in the field of biotechnology. it utilises an exceptionally rich and comprehensive data set pertaining to the universe of research groups that applied to a 1989-1993 research programme in biotechnology and...