This paper explores a new aspect of the relationship between backwardness and growth, "information spillover". If solving problems is a source of economic growth, then knowing which problems have been solved is per se valuable. A backward country will concentrate its problem-solving efforts on...

Jacobs (1969) argues that uncompensated knowledge spillovers have played a crucial role in population agglomeration and thus in the generation of cities. We explore this idea formally by extending the Romer (1986) model of (inter-firm) externalities in production to an explicit spatial context....

We examine the role of visibility in influencing government resource allocation across multiple public goods. In an electoral framework, outcomes are defined to be less visible in tasks if it is harder to assess government ability based on observed outcomes. Such a 'visibility effect' distorts...

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the determinants of prices in online auctions for collectible one-cent coins at the eBay Web site. Our initial data set consists of over 20,000 auctions which took place during July and August 1999, and was collected automaticaaly by a "spider"...

This paper develops an endogenous growth model with labor market matching and technology adoption. While labor market search and entry frictions lengthen technology diffusion, exogenous technology arrival may creatively destruct jobs in the short run. Such interrelationships give rise to...

This paper uses census IPUMS data to analyze trends in racial differences in home ownership and housing values and to examine the connection between residential segregation and the housing status of blacks relative to whites. A widening in the ownership gap between 1940 and 1960 is explained...

This paper develops a dynamic general-equilibrium model with production to examine the inter-relationships between the real and the financial sectors with and without credit market imperfections. Due to the moral hazard problem, credit rationing may be present, which is associated with a widened...

A voting procedure is candidate stable if no candidate would prefer to withdraw from an election when all of the other potential candidates enter. Dutta, Jackson, and Le Breton have recently established a number of theorems showing that candidate stability is incompatible with some other...

We use data from the manuscript census of manufacturing to estimate the effects of the length of the working day on output and wages. We find that the elasticity of output with respect to daily hours was positive but less than one - that is, there were diminishing returns to increases in hours....

This paper examines whether financial intermediaries have played a leading role in influencing India's economic performance. After describing the evolution and functions of the financial sector, we construct a set of vector autoregressive and vector error correction models to evaluate the...