Global climate mitigation will require the development and diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies.  How will patent protection affect this process?  In this paper we first review the evidence on the role of patents for innovation and international technology transfer in...

The Cross-country growth literature commonly uses aggregate economy datasets such as the Penn World Table (PWT) to estimate homogeneous production function or convergence regression models.  Against the background of a dual economy framework this paper investigates the potential bias arising...

Cotton textile firms led the development of machinery-based industrialization in the Industrial Revolution.  This paper presents price and profits data extracted from the accounting records of three cotton firms between the 1770s and the 1820s.  The course of prices and profits in cotton...

This paper tests the external validity of a simple Dictator Game as a laboratory analogue for a naturally occurring policy-relevant decision-making context.  In Uganda, where teacher absenteeism is a problem, primary school teachers' allocations to parents in a Dictator Game are positively but...

Personalized Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other forms of hardware needed to collect survey data electronically have become more affordable and powerful in recent years, leading to their use in a number of surveys in developing countries.  Simple use of these devices can offer the prospect of...

We consider the identification problem for the model of Lee and Carter (1992).  The parameters of this model are known only to be identified up to certain transformations.  Forecasts from the model may therefore depend on the arbitrarily chosen identification scheme.  A condition for...

We use survey data to investigate how urban households in Ethiopia coped with the food price shock in 2008 and idiosyncratic shocks.  Qualitative data indicate that the high food price inflation was by far the most adverse economic shock between 2004 and 2008, and that a significant proportion...

We evaluate the impact of firm-specific export subsidies on exports in Colombia.  Using a two-stage selection correction procedure, we obtain firm-specific predicted subsidy amounts that can be explained by the characteristics that determine the firms' eligibility for government support and its...

The paper presents a model where individuals decide to become workers or entrepreneurs in the presence of capital constraints and where individuals differ in wealth levels.  The model shows that the higher the initial level of inequality in wealth is, the lower the long run aggregate wealth of...

Sub-Sahara African populations are tall relative to the extremely adverse disease environment and their low incomes.  Selective mortality, which removes shorter individuals leaving taller individuals in the population, was proposed as an explanation.  From heights of surviving and...