We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only modest effects on non-oil GDP...

Based on empirical evidence, this paper looks at experience with privatized water supply and sanitation concessions and operating contracts in transition and developing countries, with particular reference to Latin America. The paper is an attempt to address the complexity of issues affecting...

The article examines the expansion of private water companies since 1989 the withdrawal from developing countries from 2003 onwards, and the economic impact of privatisation. The analysis is set in the context of the historical development of water services in the north and the south, showing...

Intellectual property (IP) regimes serve dual purposes: to provide incentives for the generation and commercialization of innovations and to foster dissemination and use of knowledge. An IP regime alone cannot maximize these two objectives simultaneously. After all, IP establishes incentives to...

The thesis collects four essays in the fields of competition and innovation economics. In chapter 1, we review the recent growth literature that analyses the effects of product market competition on growth. Contrary to the negative effect predicted by the early endogenous growth models, this...

Chapter 1 introduces the thesis providing an overview of the common themes and methods underlying this research. Chapter 2 reports an experiment that examines the characteristics of effective leaders in a leader-follower voluntary contributions game. We focus on two factors: leaders’...

The evaluation of economic forecasts is a substantial and important aspect of economic research, and a considerable part of such evaluation is performed by comparing competing forecasts. This thesis focuses on the development of statistical procedures in order that reliable comparison of...

Climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions has been at the forefront of current research efforts in the past decade. The aim of these efforts was defined at the earth summit in Rio de Janeiro as achieving “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that...