Case studies of export behavior suggest that firms who penetrate foreign markets reduce entry costs for other potential exporters, either through learning by doing or through establishing buyer- supplier linkages. We pursue the idea that spillovers associated with one firm's export activity...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...

During the period from 1880 to 1950, publicly managed retirement security programs became an important part of the social fabric in most advanced economies. In this paper we study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. We describe a model economy in which demographics,...

Why did the country that borrowed the most industrialize first? Earlier research has viewed the explosion of debt in 18th century Britain as either detrimental, or as neutral for economic growth. In this paper, we argue instead that Britain's borrowing boom was beneficial. The massive issuance...

The last two centuries witnessed the rise and fall of empires. We construct a model which rationalises this in terms of the changing trade gains from empires. In the model, empires are arrangements that reduce trade cost between an industrial metropole and the agricultural periphery. During...

How does a country's economic geography evolve along the development path? This paper documents recent employment growth in 18,961 regions in eight of the world's main economies. Overall, market potential is losing importance, and local density is gaining importance, as correlates of local...

How does an FDI project affect local firms in the same industry? Competition in the" product and factor markets tends to reduce profits of local firms, but linkage effects to supplier" industries may reduce input costs and raise profits. This paper develops an analytical framework" to assess...