This paper provides an empirical assessment of the effect of national and international knowledge spillovers on innovation at a finely defined sectoral level for six major industrialised countries over the period 1981-1995. International spillovers are always found to be effective in increasing...

We analyse the determinants of the decline in measured research productivity (the patent/R&D ratio)using panel data on manufacturing firms in the U.S. for the period 1980-93. We focus on three factors: the level of demand, the quality of patents, and technological exhaustion. We first develop an...

This paper sets out to model the evolution of market shares in the semiconductor industry. The time profile of market shares for different firms in this industry has shown a striking regularity over successive generations of products. In a model of vertical product differentiation three distinct...

This paper tests the presence of multiple independent submarkets in the Italian motor insurance industry. Independence is motivated by administrative boundaries among provinces and by further locational reasons. We find that the independence effects are sufficient to induce a minimum degree of...

We estimate semiparametric Engel curves for rural Pakistan using a large household survey. This allows us to obtain consistent estimates of the effects of household size and composition on consumption patterns even when these demographic variables are correlated with an unknown function of...

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution, growth and welfare. Land reforms have been central to strategies to improve the asset base of the poor in developing countries though their effectiveness has been hindered by political constraints on...

Although property rights are the cornerstone of capitalist economics, throughout history existing claims have been frequently overturned and redefined by revolution. A fundamental question for economists is what makes revolutions more likely to occur. A large literature has found contradictory...

This paper explores the relationship between ethnic diversity and local school funding in Kenyan primary schools. The empirical results paint a picture of pervasive local collective action problems in ethnically diverse Kenyan primary schools. Local ethnic diversity is robustly associated with...

In this paper we have built a model of financial intermediation that explains the GDP variability pattern of an economy during the development process. In our model, per capita is more volatile in the middle-income economies than in both low and high-income economies. We show that, if the model...