Showing 401 - 410 of 455
We analyze how a country's political institutions affect oil production within its borders. We find a pronounced negative relationship between political openness and volatility in oil production, with democratic regimes exhibiting less volatility than more autocratic regimes. This relationship...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008763214
While interest in social determinants of individual behavior has led to a rich theoretical literature and many efforts to measure these influences, a mature "social econometrics" has yet to emerge. This chapter provides a critical overview of the identification of social interactions. We...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008676594
This paper studies how cross-country differences in labor market institutions shape the pattern of international trade, focusing on workers' skill acquisition. I develop a model in which workers undertake non-contractible activities to acquire firm-specific skills on the job. In the model,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008676595
Previous work on social interactions analyzed the effects of nuclear family, peer, school, and neighborhood characteristics. This is the first paper showing that, independent of unobserved parent's characteristics, higher years of grandparents' schooling increase college attendance rates for...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008690493
We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnicity-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008691155
What obstacles prevent the most productive technologies from spreading to less developed economies from the world's technological frontier? In this paper, we seek to shed light on this question by quantifying the geographic and human barriers to the transmission of technologies. We argue that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010693361
Europe's monetary union is part of a broader process of integration that started in the aftermath of World War II. In this "political guide for economists" we look at the creation of the euro within the bigger picture of European integration. How and why were European institutions established?...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010667398
Existing studies show that intermediaries can help verify or screen product quality for buyers. This paper examines this claim both theoretically and empirically in the context of international trade. We develop a heterogeneous-firm model that features vertical and horizontal differentiations of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010667722
This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008464930
This paper reviews the economics approach to conflict and national borders. The paper (a) provides a summary of ideas and concepts from the economics literature on the size of nations; (b) illustrates them within a simple analytical framework where populations fight over borders and resources,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008471901