We are interested in the following question: what are the intergenerational effects of a large and unexpected immigration flow? How does it affect the welfare of the different generations living in the country that receives the immigration flow and, in particular, how does it impact on...

Innovation and the adoption of new ideas is fundamental to economic progress, and so is free trade of goods and services. Here we examine the underlying economics of the market for ideas and its implications for trade. From a positive perspective, we examine how such markets function and how...

"We show that with common knowledge and a common rate of time preference, the potential loser can always avoid wasteful conflict through a time-consistent series of small concessions. We examine how the failure of each of these assumptions may explain why conflicts arise. We also debate which...

The data show that an increase in government provided old-age pensions is strongly correlated with a reduction in fertility. What type of model is consistent with this finding? We explore this question using two models of fertility: one by Barro and Becker (1989), and one inspired by Caldwell...

Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the relative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of current IP policies. We focus...

When credit markets to finance investment in the human capital of young people are missing, the competitive equilibrium allocation is inefficient. When generations overlap, this failure can be mitigated by properly designed social institutions such as public education and public pensions. We...

According to a common argument, the presence of strong intellectual property rights spurs innovation, which then leads to fiercer competition, higher economic growth and increasing benefits for the average consumers. We argue that, in the case of intellectual property rights, this has lead to...

Taking both the enlargement process, as currently defined by the EU, and the structural funds as a given, this Paper examines what is the best way for candidate countries to fuel real convergence. The experience from earlier EU enlargements and current economic conditions within the CEEC10...

We examine asset prices and returns in the context of a version of the pure exchange economy studied in Lucas (1978) and Mehra and Prescott (1985). Our purpose is to identify the key channels by which changes in preferences affect the equity premium and the risk free rate and to develop...

We develop a model which accounts for the observed equity premium and average risk-free rate, without implying counterfactually high risk aversion. The model also does well in accounting for business-cycle phenomena. With respect to the conventional measures of business-cycle volatility and...