Many prominent scientists avidly advocate bioprospecting, the systematic search for new commercial applications for biota, especially hitherto unstudied species, as a mechanism for inducing tropical biodiversity conservation by making it commercially attractive (Wilson; Reid et al., 1993; PAHO, 1996...

Estimating risk preferences is tricky because controlling for confounding factors is difficult. Omitting or imperfectly controlling for these factors can attribute too much observable behavior to risk aversion and bias estimated preferences. Agents often modify risky decisions in response to...

International technological diffusion is a key determinant of cross-country differences in economic performance. While patents can be a useful proxy for innovation and technological change and diffusion, fully exploiting patent data for such economic analyses requires patents to be tied to...

The literature on economic growth and development has focused considerable attention on questions of risk management and the possibility of multiple equilibria associated with poverty traps. We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth...

A growing literature on poverty traps emphasizes the links between multiple equilibria and risk avoidance. However, multiple equilibria may also foster risk taking behavior by some poor people. We illustrate this idea with a simple analytical model in which people with different wealth and...