The steam engine is widely regarded as the icon of the Industrial Revolution and a prime example of a “General Purpose Technology,” and yet its contribution to growth is far from transparent. This paper examines the role that a particular innovative design in steam power, the Corliss engine,...

We study the optimal decisions regarding production and hedging of a competitive firm under price uncertainty. The firm faces asymmetric tax and has access to futures markets.

In most elections the leaders of organizaed interest groups publicly announce their support for one candidate or slate of candidates or another. Why are there political endorsements made? and what role do they play in the election process and in the determination of policy? We see public...

The extent of taxation and redistribution policy is generally determined as a political-economy equilibrium by a balance between those who gain from higher taxes/transfers and those who lose. In a stylized model of migration and human capital formation, we show -- somewhat against the conventi...

We provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production. To the best of our knowledge, this well-established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before. Our empirical procedure is summarized as follows. First, we construct a measure of...

We show in this paper that capital controls are aloso a statistically significant explanatory variable of the output-inflation tradoff coefficient, and that they improve the sacrifice ratio. Consequently, capital controls can help explain the relatively small output losses in the recent...