Studies on Indian artisans in the recent times have tended to be guided by the notion of a world market which, it is believed, drove them towards obsolescence through changing tastes or productivity. This framework, however, is not without problems. First, the presence of older industries in...

The paper draws attention to broad issues in international political economy that affect responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developing world. I argue that stable access to affordable medicines is essential for developing countries to tackle HIV/AIDS epidemics. Developing countries must...

Technology transfer for climate change mitigation needs to focus on the diffusion of existing technologies as well as the innovation of technologies. • Diffusion requires full involvement of non-state actors, particularly business investors in new and renewable energy technologies and the...

We propose a theory of con ict in which actors balance the opportunity costs of ghting with the fear of being attacked. By mobilizing, an agent foregoes returns to her peacetime economic activity, but she can seize resources and protect herself from an attack. Opportunity costs change with the...

This paper is the first empirical framework that explains the phenomenon of fast growth combined with the demographic transition occurring in the United States since 1860. I propose a structural model that unifies those events through the role of education: the key feature is that parental...

This paper uses the introduction of the national minimum wage in the UK in April 1999 as a ‘natural experiment’ to analyse the impact of minimum wages on enrolment in schooling. At the time of its introduction, only workers aged 18 years or more were covered by the legislation. The paper...

This paper analyses the association between the number of patenting manufacturing firms and the quantity and quality of relevant university research across UK postcode areas. We show that different measures of research `power' and `excellence' positively affect the patenting of small firms...

The importance of human capital to the economic performance of a national, regional or local economy is now well established. Labour markets are thought to reward individuals in proportion to their marginal productivity and to encourage an efficient allocation of skilled workers. However, labour...

We examine the effects of bank deregulation on the spatial dynamics of retail-bank branching, exploiting, much like a quasi-natural experiment, the context of intense liberalization reforms in Belgium in the late nineties. Using .ne-grained data on branch network dynamics within the metropolitan...

Recent political and academic discourse about devolution has tended to stress the economic advantages of the transfer of power from national to subnational institutions. This 'economic dividend' arises through devolved administrations' ability to tailor policies to local needs, generate...