Hundreds of patents cover products in many high technology fields such as semiconductors, information technology, and biotechnology. Firms that make, sell, or use products in these fields often have to negotiate patent rights with many intellectual property owners. The time and effort required...

Computers are an important part of modern education, yet many schoolchildren lack access to a computer at home. We test whether this impedes educational achievement by conducting the largest-ever field experiment that randomly provides free home computers to students. Although computer ownership...

Access to information may represent an important barrier to learning about and ultimately transferring to 4-year colleges for low-income community college students.  This paper explores the role that access to information technology, in particular, plays in enhancing, or possibly detracting...

There is no clear theoretical prediction regarding whether home computers are an important input in the educational production function. To investigate the hypothesis that access to a home computer affects educational outcomes, we conduct the first-ever field experiment involving the provision...

In recent years, a plethora of public and private programs in the United States have been created to close the "Digital Divide."  Interestingly, however, we know very little about the underlying causes of racial differences in rates of computer and Internet access.  In this paper, I use...