Despite nearly three decades of revolutionary government rule, poverty and inequality remain the central issues of political debate in Iran. The unexpected electoral victory of Ahmadinejad, the populist candidate in the 2005 presidential election, has been widely attributed to rising poverty and...

When urban renewal projects require that smaller parcels be assembled into a single large one, owners who hold out for higher prices may either prevent or significantly delay socially efficient redevelopment. Local governments seeking private redevelopment currently have only the choice between...

Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment and Family Formation

China?s Great Leap Forward (GLF) of 1958-61, a campaign of unprecedented mobilization efforts to achieve rapid industrialization, ended as a catastrophe. National grain production collapsed and a widespread famine claimed millions of human lives. This paper reviews a growing economic literature...

The efficiency of mechanisms to control CO2 emissions is limited by disagreement about the harm from these emissions. Thus existing emission control mechanisms require negotiated compromise regarding either the efficient price or the level of emissions to be tolerated. As an alternative to...

This paper proposes and estimates a dynamic structural model of innovation in the super- computer industry to evaluate the dependence of technological innovation on market structure. The model has two key features. First, it allows for technological leapfrogging while controlling for...

A decomposition of aggregate labor productivity based on internationally comparable data reveals that a high share of employment and low labor productivity in agriculture are mainly responsible for low aggregate productivity in poor countries. Using a two-sector general-equilibrium model, we...

We consider the effect of labor market rigidities on human capital accumulation and economic growth when some human capital is difficult to observe prior to employment. We distinguish between two types of human capital, those that formal schooling and test scores can measure (``knowledge") and...