This paper investigates whether compulsory licensing - which allows governments to license patents without the consent of patent-owners - discourages invention. Our analysis exploits new historical data on German patents to examine the effects of compulsory licensing under the US...

Compulsory licensing allows governments to license patented inventions without the consent of patent owners. Intended to mitigate the potential welfare losses from enforcing foreign-owned patents, many developing countries use this policy to improve access to drugs that are covered by...

Increasing access to education may have consequences that go beyond the effects on marginal students encouraged to enroll. It may change peer effects, school quality, and returns to skill. This paper studies how classmates and teaching inputs affect learning of university students, exploiting an...

This paper studies the effects of university STEM education on innovation and labor market outcomes by exploiting a change in enrollment requirements in Italian STEM majors. University-level scientific education had two direct effects on the development of patents by students who had acquired a...

The Marshall Plan (1948–1952) was the largest aid transfer in history. This paper estimates its effects on Italy's postwar local economic development. It exploits plausibly exogenous differences between Italian provinces in the value of reconstruction grants they received. Provinces that could...