Productivity is the main factor holding back long-term economic growth in Italy. Since the second half of the 1990s, productivity growth has been feeble both by historical standards and compared with the other main euro area countries. Understanding the reasons for such a performance and finding...

Almost all recent US firm commitment IPOs between $20 million and $80 million in proceeds have been charged an underwriting spread of exactly 7%, while in the early 1980s only 25% of IPOs faced such clustering at exactly 7% [Chen and Ritter (2000)]. Such clustering, or specifically, the apparent...

This paper provides a theory of quot;family network,quot; in contrast to quot;local externalities,quot; to explain the geographic concentration of industry. For many industries, one most important source of entrants is spinoffs, who typically locate near parent firms and benefit from knowledge...

Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, in their recent paper on file-sharing, provide numerous additional tests and facts to support their overall conclusion that file-sharing has a benign impact on record sales. In this note I attempt to replicate their additional tests and check their...

We investigate the effects of forward looking behavior in technology adoption. The setup is an overlapping generation model where agents choose between two alternative networks taking in consideration both the installed base and the expected base. The latter element is the distinctive feature of...

Employee stock options differ substantially from traded options. Most expire within 90 days of the termination of employment, and are forfeited if the employee leaves before vesting. The major accounting standards boards are in agreement that options should be expensed, but companies have...

Empirical studies of price competition typically analyze the direct effects of market structure, cost, and local demand on prices; this approach has been applied widely to studies of bank deposit rates. However, the theory of the banking firm suggests that substitutability between sources of...

This paper presents a simple model of airline schedule competition that circumvents the complexities of the spatial approach used in earlier papers. Consumers choose between two duopoly carriers, each of which has evenly spaced flights, by comparing the combinations of fare and expected schedule...

In this article, we examine why it is difficult to induce firms to form Research Joint Ventures (RJVs). We examine various incentives and disincentives for RJV formation by estimating an endogeneous switching model using data from the US National Cooperative Research Act. The empirical findings...

This empirical paper explores trends in innovation activities measured by a country's total patent application submission intensity relative to its population, and by analyzing U.S. granted patents data for cohorts of developed countries and developing countries. In addition to tabular and...