South Africa lost more than 890,000 jobs, but saw an increase in the number of skilled workers from 1989 to 1999. We argue that this is the consequence of well-documented acute apartheid-era distortions which led to a current coordination failure where (i) firms are locked into a mostly...

We use the French portion of the 2002 Community Innovation Survey to test how spillovers a®ect the likelihood that ¯rms cooperate in R&D. Unlike most existing empirical studies, our results clearly support well-established theoretical predictions of the industrial organization literature. We...

There is evidence that competing firms delegate R&D to the same independent profit-maximizing laboratory. We draw on this stylized fact to construct a model where two firms in the same industry offer transfer payments in exchange of user-specific R&D services from a common laboratory. Inter-firm...

We construct a unique data set from succession and bankruptcy sales in Mauritius to investigate the determinants of slave prices between 1825 and 1827. We find that males, females sold with children, skilled slaves and slaves sold during the peak sugar cane harvest season all fetched higher...

We build a political economy model of state policy choice highlighting the challenges to breaking barriers to the adoption of inclusive policies in Africa. We highlight necessary and sufficient conditions for a political leader to gain from implementing exclusive policies: (i) Implementing...