This paper investigates the welfare implications of the rapid innovation in Central Processing Units, and, specifically, asks whether it results in inefficient elimination of basic Personal Computer configurations. I analyze a game in which firms make multiple discrete product choices, and...

Patent statistics represent a critical tool for scholars, statisticians and policy makers interested in innovation and intellectual property rights. Many analyses are based on heterogeneous methods delineating the inventors' or firms' patent portfolios without questioning the quality of the...

The family of Generalized Empirical Likelihood (GEL) estimators provide a number of potential advantages relative to Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimators. While it is well known these estimators share an asymptotic distribution, the GEL estimators may perform better in finite sample,...

Productivity is the main factor holding back long-term economic growth in Italy. Since the second half of the 1990s, productivity growth has been feeble both by historical standards and compared with the other main euro area countries. Understanding the reasons for such a performance and finding...

Almost all recent US firm commitment IPOs between $20 million and $80 million in proceeds have been charged an underwriting spread of exactly 7%, while in the early 1980s only 25% of IPOs faced such clustering at exactly 7% [Chen and Ritter (2000)]. Such clustering, or specifically, the apparent...

This paper provides a theory of quot;family network,quot; in contrast to quot;local externalities,quot; to explain the geographic concentration of industry. For many industries, one most important source of entrants is spinoffs, who typically locate near parent firms and benefit from knowledge...

Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, in their recent paper on file-sharing, provide numerous additional tests and facts to support their overall conclusion that file-sharing has a benign impact on record sales. In this note I attempt to replicate their additional tests and check their...

We investigate the effects of forward looking behavior in technology adoption. The setup is an overlapping generation model where agents choose between two alternative networks taking in consideration both the installed base and the expected base. The latter element is the distinctive feature of...

Employee stock options differ substantially from traded options. Most expire within 90 days of the termination of employment, and are forfeited if the employee leaves before vesting. The major accounting standards boards are in agreement that options should be expensed, but companies have...

This paper presents a new data set of individual residential property transactions in England. The main novelty of the data is the record of all listing price changes and all offers made between initial listing and sale agreement. We establish a number of stylized facts pertaining to the...