This paper analyses a set of new scenarios for energy markets in Europe to evaluate the consistency of economic incentives and climate objectives. It focuses in particular on the role of natural gas across a range of climate policy scenarios (including the Copenhagen Pledges and the EU Roadmap)...

This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of China's trade integration and technological change in a multi-country quantitative Ricardian-Heckscher-Ohlin model. We simulate two alternative growth scenarios: a "balanced" one in which China's productivity grows at the same rate in each...

This paper surveys the experience of economic growth in the 20th century with a focus on technological change at the frontier together with issues related to success and failure in catch-up growth. A detailed account of growth performance based on historical national accounts data is given and...

Which structural reforms affect the speed the regional convergence within a country? We found that domestic financial development, trade/current account openness, better institutional infrastructure, and selected labor market reforms facilitate regional convergence. However, these reforms have...

This paper examines the interdependence between innovation and imports of intermediates, and their joint impact on productivity. We do so by developing a quantitative model with heterogeneous firms and international trade where firms can invest in R&D and source inputs internationally....

This paper looks at the interplay between human capital and innovation in the presence of climate and educational policies. Using recent empirical estimates, human capital and general purpose R&D are introduced in an integrated assessment model that has been extensively applied to study the...

We study a structural model of R&D alliance networks in which firms jointly form R&D collaborations to lower their production costs while competing on the product market. We derive the Nash equilibrium of this game, provide a welfare analysis and determine the optimal R&D subsidy program that...

Recent evidence suggests that despite opening up a country for trade, the productivity gap between developed and emerging economies often does not close. This paper examines credit constraints as one channel held responsible for hampering convergence. Specifically, we extend a Melitz and...

Using micro data for Belgium we investigate the relationship between occupational tasks changes and the rise of service trade. We focus the analysis on the extensive margin and look at the heterogeneous proliferation of firms involved in exports and imports of services across sectors...

Abstract Constitutions are commonly described as national products shaped by domestic politics. This paper develops and empirically tests a different hypothesis, which is that constitutions are also shaped by transnational influence, or “diffusion”. Constitutional rights can diffuse through...