The food availability decline and Sen's entitlement are two leading hypotheses for the causation of famine. Previous research based on case studies has given independent support to each of the accounts. This paper analyses the Chinese famine of 1959-61 by jointly considering entitlement...

Evidence shows that firms build their market position by consistently investing in R&D over time and accumulating knowledge protected by secrecy, patents and other appropriability devices. To explore the macroeconomic implications of this fact, I construct an economy where oligopolistic firms...

The focus of this paper is the economics of the pharmaceutical R&D process. Major developments currently impacting the industry include the fact that R&D costs for new drugs are rising very rapidly. Product life cycles are also shortening, meaning there is less time to recover R&D costs and...

Recent econometric studies of the effect of taxes on charitable giving have called into question the behavioral parameters derived from cross-section models. In particular, these studies imply that taxes affect contributions primarily by influencing their timing, not their long-term levels. The...

We consider an economy (e.g. Chile 1973-83 or modern Turkey) with a minimum wage sector and a free sector, and a tax on labor earnings. We ask can a minimum wage hike raise employment and economic efficiency?

This paper generalizes results from Anderson, De Palma, and Thisse [1992] linking individual random utility and aggregate representative individual demand models, to consider a comparable relation for the willingness to pay functions for quality attribut es of marketed goods. It also suggests...

This paper examines the three major explanations for the disparity between WTP and WTA observed in contingent value surveys and laboratory experiments: a belief that the results must be biased in some fashion, Hanemann's (1991) substitutes hypothesis, and the loss aversion model proposed by...

A private commodity is divided among agents with single peaked preferences over their share. A rationing method elicits individual peaks (demands); if the commodity is overdemanded (resp. underdemanded), no agent receives more (resp. less) than his peak. A fixed path rationing method allocates...

This paper shows that some key stylized facts of exchange-rate-based stabilization plans can be explained by the uncertain duration of the plans themselves. Uncertain duration is modeled to reflect evidence showing that devaluation probabilities are higher when the plans are introduced and...

A review of the large empirical literature using household-level data on the impacts of family size on educational outcomes (enrollment, attendance, completion) reveals mixed results. Many studies fail to uncover statistically significant links; those that do usually reveal small impacts. More...