After faithfully maintaining a fixed exchange rate and fully convertible currency for almost a decade Argentina still pays higher interest rates on peso denominated debt than on US dollar denominated debt. The interest rate spread is the price of keeping the option to devalue alive. Argentina...

Previous research in economics shows that paying the agent based on performance induces the agent to exert more effort thereby enhancing productivity. On the other hand, research in psychology argues that performance-based financial incentives may inhibit creativity and innovation. In a...

Exchange rate pass-through literature identifies an important delay in price responses, especially in differentiated products. Using the methodology of Bajari, Benkard and Levin (2007), I estimate the structural price adjustment cost consistent with this fact in the European car market. My...

The rapid decline of German emigration before World War I constitutes a puzzle that traditional explanations (decrease in the international wage gap, growing industrialization, fall in the fertility or international competition with other migrants) can only partly solve. It therefore seems...

Our objective in this paper is to review what economists have said about incentive schemes to promote R&D, including intellectual property. While we focus on environments in which other forms of protection are not available, we note that other protections can obviate the need for any formal...

The contribution of new technology to economic growth can only be realized when and if the new technology is widely diffused and used. Diffusion itself results from a series of individual decisions to begin using the new technology, decisions which are often the result of a comparison of the...

Intellectual property treaties have two main types of provisions: national treatment of foreign inventors, and harmonization of protections. I characterize the circumstances in which countries would want to treat foreign inventors the same as national inventors. I then argue that national...

This paper explores the relationship between the structure of the market for the refining and distribution of gasoline and the wholesale price of unbranded gasoline sold to independent gasoline retailers. Theoretically, the effect of an increase in vertical integration is ambiguous because...

Merger simulation is growing in importance as a tool to evaluate the unilateral competitive effects of mergers. This paper offers a relatively non-technical description of the principles of merger simulation. In addition, it introduces PCAIDS, a new and highly flexible "calibrated-demand" merger...