This paper proposes a new instrument for institutional quality—-the salary of colonial governors—-to investigate whether variations in the quality of British colonial rule continue to have an impact on the economic performance of former colonies. Governors’ salaries provide a good source...

This paper explores the influence of Japan and the United States over the geographic distribution of Asian Development Bank (ADB) funds. Although nominally an independent, multilateral organization, the ADB is widely regarded as bowing to the interests of its two most influential donors....

The reaction of closed-end fund share prices to changes in portfolio values is on average the same whether funds are trading at discounts or premia and whether the changes in portfolio values are positive or negative. If closed-end fund discounts and premia do correctly measure investor...

Constant returns to scale, always a simplifying assumption, is often also much more: many important results depend critically on the very special properties of this class of production function. This paper provides a unified set of simple proofs for most of the crucial analytical properties of...

In orthodox economics, honesty or integrity is treated as either part of the constraint function or the objective function. This is at the origin of the statement, “every man has his price.” However, if integrity has a price, why do agents experience shame when they sell it while they do not...

Using a sample of patents litigated between 1977 and 1997, I estimate stock market reactions to patent litigation decisions and to patent grants. I find that the resolution of uncertainty over validity and infringement is worth as much to the firm as the initial patent right. Each is worth about...

This paper provides a survey and synthesis of econometric tools that have been employed to study economic growth. While these tools range across a variety of statistical methods, they are united in the common goals of first, identifying interesting contemporaneous patterns in growth data and...