We investigate the origins of identity and the innate proclivity to draw a distinction between "insiders" and "outsiders".We propose an evolutionary explanation: we argue that identity arises because it facilitates survival. In an evolutionary setting we endogenize preferences and demonstrate...

Recent theories suggest that better information in destination countries could reduce firm’s fixed export costs,lower uncertaintyo f trade policy responses,and improve policy making processes.To identify the relation betweeninformation and fixed export costs,I investigate how information,...

We examine a duopoly pricing game where some customers know of no firms, others know of only one firm, and some know of both firms. Firms have constant and identical marginal costs, sell homogenous goods and choose prices simultaneously. Customers observe the prices of the firms that are known...

In the 16th century, North America contained 25-30 million buffalo; by the late 19th century less than 100 remained. While removing the buffalo east of the Mississippi took settlers over 100 years, the remaining 10 to 15 million buffalo on the Great Plains were killed in a punctuated slaughter...

We analyze three potential solutions to the spamn problem - sender pays pricing, receiver pays pricing and filtering - used alone or concurrently. We find that filters alone may exacerbate the spam problem if the spammer tries to evade them by sending multiple variants of the message to each...

In this paper we use nonparametric statistical tools to quantify motion-picture profit. We quantify the unconditional distribution of profit, the distribution of profit conditional on stars and sequels, and we also model the conditional expectation of movie profits using a non- parametric...

This paper uses both theory and empirical work to examine the effect of environmental regulations on trade flows. We develop a simple economic model to demonstrate how unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity and aggregation issues bias measurements of the relationship between regulatory costs and...

We develop a series of simple general equilibrium models that incorporate a pure Veblen good. We examine the comparative statics of well-being, and the consumption of leisure, the Veblen good, a standard consumption good, a standard public good, and a good that we call community, with respect to...

The WTO inspired strengthening of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in developing countries remains highly controversial even 15 years after the 1994 TRIPs agreement. This paper employs both theory and empirics to assess how a strengthening of IPRs affects international technology diffusion by...