To analyze the impact of labor scarcity on technology adoption and innovation, this study uses the differential spread of cholera across France in 1832, 1849 and 1854, before the transmission mode of this disease was understood. The results suggest that a larger share of cholera deaths in the...

How does the publication of patents affect innovation? We answer this question by exploiting a large-scale natural experiment--the passage of the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA)--that accelerated the public disclosure of most U.S. patents by two years. We obtain causal...

Unsustainable land use is a key threat to both economic development and environmental conservation in developing countries. This study implemented a randomized controlled trial in arid Burkina Faso to test the effectiveness of financial incentives in stimulating the adoption of sustainable land...

How does supporting early clean technologies affect the long-run transition away from dirty technologies? Early policy action generates immediate environmental benefits from increased adoption of available efficient products, but may result in intertemporal substitution away from later products...

We study how consumers trade off digital versus in-person banking services and how consumer demand impacts bank technology choices. We use the COVID-19 pandemic as a laboratory, where pandemic risk raised the cost of in-person bank services. After the cost of in-person banking rises, customers,...

The electricity crisis in Pakistan is triggering grid power outage (load shedding) for many decades, which has not only affected the commercial and industrial sectors but also the domestic sector, specifically the livelihood of rural areas of the country. However, the extant literature advocates...