Es gab einmal das Märchen, dass Software eigentlich kein Wirtschaftsgut sein könne. Denn so müssen die Zollbeamten gedacht haben, die bei einem Einreisenden einen Stoß Disketten fanden, welche sie verzollen wollten. Als der Mann ihnen aber versicherte, diese seien mit Software beschrieben,...

How does the formation of cross-country teams affect the organization of workand the structure of wages? To study this question, we propose a theory of theassignment of heterogeneous agents into hierarchical teams, where less skilledagents specialize in production and more skilled agents...

This paper argues that changes in the returns to occupational tasks have contributed tochanges in the wage distribution over the last three decades. Using Current PopulationSurvey (CPS) data, we first show that the 1990s polarization of wages is explained bychanges in wage setting between and...

We use unique plant-level data to study the link between the local availability of services andthe decision of manufacturing firms to source materials from abroad. To guide our empiricalanalysis we develop a monopolistic-competition model of the materials sourcing decisions ofheterogeneous...