New technologies generate positive externalities — non-innovators can benefit through the adoption or imitation of the new technologies. International trade serves as a major channel for technology diffusion, allowing importing countries to acquire technical knowledge that they can potentially...

Geographical deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s led to a wave of US bank mergers. A still unresolved issue is the role that distance between target and acquirer plays in the performance and efficiency of mergers. In theory, a nearby bank acquisition reduces monitoring costs while a distant...

We propose a set of consistency conditions that frontier efficiency measures should meet to be most useful for regulatory analysis or other purposes. The efficiency estimates should be consistent in their efficiency levels, rankings, and identification of best and worst firms, consistent over...

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at defined contribution individual account (IA) components of social security systems is that they are too expensive. This paper investigates the cost-effectiveness of three options for constructing funded social security pillars: 1) IA's invested in the...