Though economists have examined labor displacement due to digitization, few have considered the new work and value created. Studies of platforms invariably focus on specific organizational forms such as sharing or gigs. They build taxonomies based on the platform's organization – few consider...

After many years of neglect, there is a renewed interest in agricultural mechanization in Africa. Since government initiatives to promote mechanization, e.g., by importing and subsidizing tractors, are confronted with major governance challenges, private-sector initiatives offer a promising...

Most of society's innovation systems -- academic science, the patent system, open source, etc. -- are “open” in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of intermediate...

Prior research, primarily based on lab experiments, suggests that females might be more averse to competition than males and could be more inclined towards collaboration, instead. Were these findings to generalize to adults across the workforce, there could be profound implications for...

The paper asks whether trade can help to achieve the employment targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. The focus is on Goal 8, which is to "promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all." The theoretical and empirical links...

Which region(s) will come to dominate the world economy? This paper develops the Global Gaidar Model (GGM), a 17-region, 2-skills, 100-period OLG model, to address this and other questions. The model is carefully calibrated to 2017 UN demographic and IMF fiscal data. Productivity growth and its...

Online platforms often face challenges being both fair (i.e., non-discriminatory) and efficient (i.e., maximizing revenue). Using computer vision algorithms and observational data from a microlending marketplace, we find that choices made by borrowers creating online profiles impact both of...

In low-income communities, pressure to share income with others may disincentivize work, distorting labor supply. We document that across countries, social groups that undertake more interpersonal transfers work fewer hours. Using a field experiment, we enable piece-rate factory workers in Côte...

We study how individual political views shape firm behavior and labor market outcomes. Using new micro-data on the political affiliation of business owners and private-sector workers in Brazil over the 2002-2019 period, we first document the presence of political assortative matching: business...

This review discusses frontier topics in economic geography as they relate to firms and agglomeration economies. We focus on areas where empirical research is scarce but possible. We first outline a conceptual framework for city formation that allows us to contemplate what empiricists might...