Inefficiency in the U.S. health care system has often been characterized as "flat of the curve" spending providing little or no incremental value. In this paper, we draw on macroeconomic models of diffusion and productivity to better explain the empirical patterns of outcome improvements in...

Variation in technology adoption is a key driver of differences in productivity. Previous studies sought to explain variations in technology adoption by heterogeneity in profitability, costs of adoption, or other factors. Less is known about how adoption is affected by bias in the perceived...

constrains the move to the new sector. Thus, turbulent periods provide opportunities for structural shifts in favor of the new sector. The analysis assesses both the positive aspects of policies and the welfare costs associated with departures from fully flexible labor markets. It also discusses...

We present a model of growth and technology transfer based on the idea that technologies are specific to particular combinations of inputs. We argue that this model is more realistic than the usual specification, in which an improvement in any technique for producing a given good improves all...

We consider the differential incentives of the North and the South to provide patent protection to innovating firms in the North. The two regions are assumed to have a different distribution of preferences over the range of exploitable technologies. Due to the scarcity of R&D resources, the two...

Governments in many low- and middle-income countries are developing health insurance products as a complement to tax-funded, subsidized provision of health care through publicly operated facilities. This paper discusses two rationales for this transition. First, health insurance would boost...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic structural model of demand for a multi-attribute product. The demand side equilibrium supports a product spectrum, the characteristics of which evolve over time in response to supply innovations induced by the composition and extent of aggregate...

Little is known about how the adoption and diffusion of medical innovation is related to and influenced by market characteristics such as competition. The particular complications involved in investigating these relationships in the health care sector may explain the dearth of research. We...

Alan Garber and Jonathan Skinner (2008) famously conjectured that the US health care system was "uniquely inefficient" relative to other countries. We test this idea using cross-country data on prescription drug sales newly linked with an arguably objective measure of relative therapeutic...

Well functioning Markets for Technology (MFT) allow inventors to sell their inventions to others that may derive more value from them. We argue that the growing reliance on science in inventions enhances MFT. In addition to higher quality inventions, reliance on science may enhance gains from...