This paper studies the causes of policy volatility in developing countries during 1970-1999. To construct composite policy volatility indicators, the paper applies a robust principal components analysis to Washington Consensus policy variables. The results suggest three dimensions of policy...

Why might people in poor countries leave school earlier and invest less in learning on-thejob than people in rich ones? How do these human capital decisions impact on inequality? To give quantitative answers to these questions, I build an overlapping generations model with optimal human capital...

This paper examines whether growth regressions should incorporate dualism and structural change. If there is a differential across sectors in the marginal product of labour, changes in the structure of employment can raise aggregate total factor productivity. The paper develops empirical growth...

A version of the Translog demand system is compared with the Almost Ideal demand model within a time series setting, where variables are nonstationary, by testing both models for the theoretical demand propositions of 'homogeneity, symmetry and negativity' and by comparing out of sample...

This paper introduces the idea that strong patent protection can lead innovators to rest on their laurels, into a simple tournament based framework. Concentrating on optimal patent protection, the one that maximizes production, the model shows that there is a positive relationship between the...

For simple economic models of transfrontier pollution, Chander and Tulkens (1995) and (1997) have offered a formula for transfers to sustain international cooperation on a voluntary basis and which deter coalitional free-riding under some reasonable behaviours of countries not in the coalition....

High rerunning rates among incumbents and among the two major parties, allow studies of US incumbency advantage to bypass the selection problem of who chooses to rerun. In countries where rerunning is not widespread among individuals or parties, estimation using methods developed for the US may...

We present a theory and experimental evidence on pricing and portfolio choices under asymmetric reasoning. We show that under asymmetric reasoning, prices do not reflect all (types of) reasoning. Some agents who observe prices that cannot be reconciled with their reasoning switch from perceiving...

This paper analyses the effects on voting behavior of information disseminated over the Internet. We address endogeneity in Internet availability by exploiting regional and technological peculiarities of the preexisting voice telephony network that hindered the roll-out of fixed-line...

This paper proposes a dual growth model built on a mechanism of self-selection whereby heterogeneous workers choose their optimal sectors based on comparative advantage. It shows that economic growth shifts workers’ comparative advantage, and this shift induces rural-urban structural change....