Can the existence of positive productivity spillovers between co-workers be explained by the presence of complementarities in a firm's production function? A simple model demonstrates that this is possible when workers perform their tasks sequentially and part of individuals' pay is determined...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? In addressing this important question, prior studies ignored a distinction between discrete innovation aiming at entirely new technology and continuous improvement consisting of numerous incremental improvements and modifications made upon the...

This paper augments the existing literature on trade and child labor by exploring the effects of terms of trade changes in the context of a three good general equilibrium model, where one of the goods is a non-traded good. We find that under quasi-linear preferences the effect of the terms of...

The elasticity of substitution between capital and labor (σ) is usually considered a "deep parameter". This paper shows, in contrast, that σ is affected by both globalization and technology, and that different intensities in these drivers have different consequences for the OECD and the...

This note provides a useful property of the Allen-Uzawa partials for the translog cost function. It also suggests how the main results extend to any functional form with certain properties. The curvature of the Allen-Uzawa matrix is the same as the curvature of the Hessian matrix. Intuitively...

The core-periphery model by Krugman (1991) has two 'dramatic' implications: catastrophic agglomeration and locational hysteresis. We study this seminal model with CES instead of Cobb-Douglas upper tier preferences. This small generalization suffices to change these stark implications. For a wide...

The Frisch elasticity of labor supply can be estimated by regressing hours worked on the hourly wage rate, controlling for consumption of the individual worker. However, most household panel surveys contain consumption information only at the household level. We show that proxying individual...

Any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability. The standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification - this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital-skill...