This paper is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the connections between sovereignty (or its absence) and growth rates in lagging countries over the period 1870 to 1950. Using a four-fold taxonomy of sovereignty, our estimates of sovereignty differentials for growth rates of per capita...

We document for the US and Continental Europe that home-production time remained essentially flat during the last 50 years while changes in market time and leisure offset each other. We then focus on the US and France during 1970-2005 which are on the opposite sides of the spectrum: while US...

While intermarriage with non-indigenous people has been identified as a significant predictor of the economic assimilation of Native people, the explanation for this effect is less understood. In this paper, I examine whether the economic assimilation from marrying a Native person with white...

Does the internet increase competition? To address this question, I exploit two institutional details unique to Germany: (1) Some municipalities received glass fibre cables that cannot be upgraded to DSL; I use these municipalities as a treatment group with reduced online competition. (2) German...

The paper investigates survival patterns of Brazilian franchising firms during the 1994-1999 period. First, at a more descriptive level one considered the (percentage) survival of newly created franchisors in the following years. The evidence indicated a drastic decay in survival after only a...

This paper studies asymmetric price responses of individual firms, via daily retail prices of almost all gasoline stations in the Netherlands and suggested prices of the five largest oil companies over more than two years. I find that 38% of the stations respond asymmetrically to changes in the...

In this paper we introduce a new approach to estimating a differentiated product demand system that allows for error in market shares as measures of choice probabilities. In particular, our approach allows for products with zero sales in the data, which is a frequent phenomenon that arises in...

This paper follows two objectives: (i) It demonstrates the merits of the survey based approach to B2C eCommerce characteristics and company strategy, and (ii) it presents empirical evidence of the crucial importance of size and marketing investment in B2C eCommerce markets. It presents...

Do we have effective competition between the gasoline's big five oligopolists (Aral, Shell, Esso, Total and Jet) and fringe gasoline stations? Using 2014 Market Transparency price data from 66 cities with populations between 60,000 and 100,000, we analyze which brands lead price increases, the...

Heller explains the underperformance and informality of retail in transition Russia as the consequence of botched privatization. He calls this outcome anticommons: too many people hold a veto, leading to underuse. Heller argues that the existence of too many overlapping property rights prevents...