The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board administers the purchase and sale of wine and spirits across the state and is legally mandated to charge a uniform 30% markup on all products. We use an estimated discrete choice model of demand for spirits, together with information on wholesale prices, to...

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) controls the purchase and sale of alcoholic beverages across the state and is legally mandated to charge a uniform 30% mark-up on all products. This paper investigates the welfare implications of this uniform markup. We show that consumption patterns...

We ask whether incorporating product quality differentiation has real effects on trade flows and welfare. We develop and calibrate a multi-country, general equilibrium model of international trade that includes endogenous product quality differentiation amongst heterogeneous firms. Separable...

IPR policies each period. I use country heterogeneity in education, population, and bilateral trade costs to induce IPR protection choices and firm productivity distributions consistent with the data. I compare the benchmark open economy model to a model without trade and find that the latter...

Empirical literature has largely concluded that increasing intellectual property rights (IPRs) leads to increased trade as firms see the value of their goods (and the ideas embodied in them) increase. These exercises, however, fail to incorporate the changing incentives of developing country...

I study the US semiconductor industry in the context of 1980s legal reform which strengthened intellectual property rights. Prior to the reform, the industry was highly concentrated in a few vertically integrated firms. Post reform, the entry of small design firms led to a fragmented industry...