This paper takes a new look at the long-run implications of resource abundance. Using a Schumpeterian growth model that yields an analytical solution for the transition path, it derives conditions under which the curse of natural resources occurs and is in fact a curse, meaning that welfare...

It is becoming increasingly clear that the evaluation of policy measures that affect the growth performance of the economy requires adequate treatment of their effects on technological change. Environmental policy and regulations fit in this category. In this paper, I study the effects of taxes...

In industrial economies, firms build their market position by consistently investing in R&D over time and accumulating knowledge protected by secrecy, patents and other appropriability devices. To explore the macroeconomic implications of this fact, I construct an economy where oligopolistic...

To account for the qualitative differences between developed and developing countries, this paper argues that the expensive in-house R&D that manufacturing firms undertake in advanced industrial economies cannot be supported in countries that are in the early stage of industrialization and do...

Evidence shows that firms build their market position by accumulating knowledge protected by secrecy, patents and other appropriation devices. I explore the implications of this fact in a model economy where oligopolistic firms establish in-house R&D programs. In symmetric equilibrium, the...

In the early stage of western industrialization, innovation was the domain of individuals who devoted their entrepreneurial talents to the development of a new product or process, typically setting up a new firm in order to take the innovation to the market. Today, commercial R&D is almost...

I study an economy where oligopolistic firms establish in-house R&D programs to produce a continuous flow of cost-reducing (incremental) innovations. The scale of firms' R&D operations determines the rate of productivity growth. I first study the role of concentration, firm size, and demand,...

Unemployment occurs when some agents, say unions, have control over the wage and set it above the market-clearing level. In other words, it is generated by their exercise of market power. What if, in addition, firms have control over prices in the product market? In this case, market power of...

The modern view of the labor market holds that unemployment is high in economies where unions are strong and the government and other institutions impose on firms obligations that raise the cost of labor. This view is generally correct and yields a clear policy implication: more competition in...

I study the joint determination of market structure and growth in an oligopolistic economy. Firms run in-house R&D programs to produce over time a continuous flow of cost-reducing innovations. In symmetric equilibrium, the relation between market structure and growth has two aspects. First, a...