Consumption in the time of Internet is characterized by extremely low search costs, leading to increased product diversity (the long tail) and large mainstream products (superstars).  In this paper, I show how the mainstream taste can be catered by a niche product, while minority tastes can be...

What kind of tariff reform is likely to raise welfare in situations where tariff revenue is important?  Uncertainty about specification and risk from imprecise parameter estimates of any particular specification reduce the credibility of simulation estimates.  A promising alternative is to...

In an environment where voters face an inference problem on the competence level of policy makers, this paper shows how subjecting these policy makers to reelection can reduce the degree of policy experimentation to the benefit of the status quo.  This may be a reason why some notable policy...

This paper provides micro-level evidence that drug advertising regulations and inspections in China are used by local governments to discriminate against firms from outside the province.  Furthermore, the degree of discrimination varies across firms in that drug manufacturers which have closer...

People believe that, even in very large samples, proportions of binary signals might depart significantly from the population mean.  We model this "non-belief in the Law of Large Numbers" by assuming that a person believes that proportions in any given sample might be determined by a rate...

Regular use of effective health-products such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITN) by a household benefits its neighbors by (a) reducing chances of infection and (b) raising awareness about product-effectiveness, thereby increasing product-use.  Due to their potential social benefits and...

We introduce two new tools for relating preferences and demand to firm behavior and economic performance.  The "Demand Manifold" links the elasticity and convexity of an arbitrary demand function; the "Utility Manifold" links the elasticity and concavity of an arbitrary utility function. ...

Information on the performance of equities during the latter part of the globalized long nineteenth century is scarce, particularly for smaller European economies such as Ireland.  Using a dataset of over 35,000 price-year observations from the Investor's Monthly Manual, this paper constructs...

It is commonly thought that the rapid increase in household saving during the early years of National Socialism was partly driven by ideological factors.  On this view, the popularity of the regime allowed it to exert 'moral suasion' on households to save more than they might have done in the...

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...