This paper studies how the Intellectual Property Right (IPR) regime in destination countries influences the way multinationals structure the international organization of their production. In particular, we explore how multinationals divide tasks of different complexities across countries with...

This paper studies how comparative advantage and the political elites endowments shape long-run performance in an economy with imperfect political institutions. In a capital-scarce economy, an autocrat catering to the needs of landowners favors openness to trade at an early stage of development,...

This paper investigates the link between trade and environment by exploring the effects of green tariffs on the location of firms, innovation and the environment. It shows that tariffs levied on polluting goods could result in less global pollution than harmonization of environmental standards...

This paper studies cross-border intellectual property rights (IPR) as a North-South contract using a Nash bargaining approach and distinguishes between the outcome and its actual enforcement. The absorptive capacity of the Southern country to exploit technology transfer plays a key role in the...

This paper aims to explain the rise and fall of communism by exploring the interplay between economic incentives and social preferences transmitted by ideology. We introduce inequality-averse and inefficiency-averse agents and analyze their conflict through the interaction between leaders with...

In this paper we study theoretically and empirically the role of the interaction between skilled migration and intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection in determining innovation in developing countries (South). We show that although emigration from the South may directly result in the...

This paper studies the consequences of parallel import (PI) on process innovation of firms heterogeneous in their production technology. In an international setting where foreign markets differ with respect to their intellectual property rights regime, a move by a technologically inferior firm...

Are natural resources a source of conflict or stability? Empirical studies demonstrate that rents from natural resources, and in particular oil, are an important source of civil war. Allegedly, resource rents attract rent seekers, which destabilize society. However, there is a large literature...

We develop an endogenous growth model to study the long run consequences of offshoring with firm heterogeneity and incomplete contracts. In so doing, we model offshoring as the geographical fragmentation of a firm’s production chain between a home upstream division and a foreign downstream...

This research sheds light on the role of multinational production on the type of innovation performed by firms. We construct matched firm-patent data to measure the scope of innovation, that is the extent to which the output of R&D can be spread across different product lines. We focus on two...