Whether the danger invoked is nuclear war or genetically modified foods, far more people in some countries than in others say they are afraid. Using data from six surveys, I show that the levels of reported fear of different dangers correlate strongly across both individuals and countries. I...

We document geographic concentration by both venture capital firms and venture capital-financed companies in three cities - San Francisco, Boston, and New York. We find that firms open new satellite offices based on the success rate of venture capital-backed investments in an area. Geography is...

We study how the employment effects of enterprise zones vary with their location, implementation, and administration, based on evidence from California. We use new establishment-level data and geographic mapping methods, coupled with a survey of enterprise zone administrators. Overall, the...

We combine data on trade, production, and input use to compute the value added content of trade for forty-two countries from 1970 to 2009. For the world, the ratio of value added to gross trade falls by ten to fifteen percentage points, with two-thirds of this decline in the last two decades....

We develop a property-rights model of the firm in which production entails a continuum of uniquely sequenced stages. In each stage, a final-good producer contracts with a distinct supplier for the procurement of a customized stage-specific component. Our model yields a sharp characterization for...

This paper makes two methodological contributions. First, it proposes a framework to decompose total production activities at the country, sector, or country-sector level, to different types, depending on whether they are for pure domestic demand, traditional international trade, simple GVC...

We combine data on trade, production, and input use to document changes in the value added content of trade between 1970 and 2009. The ratio of value-added to gross exports fell by roughly 10 percentage points worldwide. The ratio declined 20 percentage points in manufacturing, but rose in...