This paper documents and explains the recent rise of "big box" general merchandisers. Data from the Census of Retail Trade for 1977-2007 show that general-merchandise chains grew much faster than specialist retail chains, and that general merchandisers that added the most stores also...

This paper documents and explains the recent rise of "big box" general merchandisers. Data from the Census of Retail Trade for 1977-2007 show that general-merchandise chains grew much faster than specialist retail chains, and that general merchandisers that added the most stores also...

By exploiting the uneven consolidation in the retail sector over the past few years we find that Chinese and other LDC imports are disproportionately sold by the largest retail firms. Smaller retailers sell almost as many imports but they are more likely to import from high-cost source...

Retail chains and imports of consumer goods from developing countries have grown sharply over the past 25 years. Wal-Mart's sales, which currently account for 15% of U.S. imports of consumer goods from China, grew 90-fold over this period, while U.S. imports from China increased 30-fold. We...

Purpose This paper is a dedication to Professor Ngo Van Long who introduced the idea of Kant-Nash equilibrium. The author extends this analysis to the study of adult and child labor markets. Design/methodology/approach This is a game theoretic analysis of the market for adult and child workers...

A wave of local anti-immigration laws has swept the country, triggering contentious debate and raising significant legal and policy issues. Approximately 150 such laws were enacted between 2005 and 2008 though many of these laws are being challenged in the courts. One critical dimension that has...

We propose a theory of 'regulatory endogenous sunk costs' (RESC), in which a captured regulator raises minimum quality standards when market size increases in order to protect incumbent firms. Our RESC theory's predictions that market size is unrelated to industry concentration and positively...

In this paper, we review the econometric studies of East Asian growth by Kim and Lau (1994) as well as Young (1994). Constructing a multi-sectoral model of technological transfer, we affirm the complementarity thesis of Kim and Lau: knowledge capital and physical capital accumulation (as well as...

If child labor as a mass phenomenon occurs not because of parental selfishness but because of the parents' concern for the household's survival, the popular argument for banning child labor loses much of its force. However, this assumption about parental decision-making coupled with the...

We develop an economic model that explains historical data on government corruption in Ming and Qing China. In our model, officials' extensive powers result in corrupt income matching land's share in output. We estimate corrupt income to be between 14 to 22 times official income resulting in...