This paper studies compensation schemes that can motivate a worker to acquire nonverifiable firm-specific skills, when the acquisition process is also one of learning about managerial talent. At the beginning of the employment relationship, the worker encounters opportunities to enhance her...

The paper considers a repeated election game between an infinitely-lived representative voter and finitely-lived, heterogeneous politicians. The voter's prior belief about the incumbent's competency is updated during the incumbent's first term in office. The voter's problem is to find a rule...

This paper considers the threat of stricter regulation as a policy instrument to enhance innovation into cleaner technology. It is argued that in some contexts the government would find it optimal to regulate with positive probability but not with certainty. In those contexts the optimal policy...

The paper aims to highlight some of the most important implementation issues associated with the greening of global value chains with special attention given to how public policies and business strategies can support each other in meeting the challenge, particularly in developing countries. This...

This paper explores the evolution of OECD imports over time, measuring their concentration across origin countries at the product level. The authors find evidence of diversification followed, in the very last years of the sample period (post-2000), by a slight re-concentration. This...

Using a novel dataset with transactions level exports data from four African countries (Malawi, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania), this paper uncovers evidence of a high degree of experimentation at the extensive margin associated with low survival rates, consistent with high and middle income country...

The focus of trade policy has shifted in recent years from economy-wide reductions in tariffs and trade restrictions toward targeted interventions to facilitate trade and promote exports. Most of these latter interventions are based on the new mantra of "aid-for-trade" rather than on hard...