This paper summarizes four stylized facts about the prescription drug markets after patent expiration during the 80s: (i) generic firms entered the market at different points of time after patent expiration and they seldom exited; (ii) the brand-name price remained much higher than generic prices,...

Theories in political economy depend critically on assumptions about motivations of politicians. Our analysis starts from the premise that politicians, like other economic agents, are rational individuals who make career decisions by comparing the expected returns of alternative choices. The...

This paper develops a simulation estimation algorithm that is particularly useful for estimating dynamic panel data models with unobserved endogenous state variables. The new approach can easily deal with the commonly encountered and widely discussed "initial conditions problem," as well as the...