This paper draws on household survey data from countries of all income levels to measure how average unemployment rates vary with income per capita. We document that unemployment is increasing with GDP per capita. Furthermore, we show that this fact is accounted for almost entirely by...

One of the leading theories of entrepreneurship is that less risk averse individuals become entrepreneurs and more risk averse individuals become their employees. Kihlstrom and Laffont (1979) formalized this insight in an elegant and widely taught general equilibrium model. However, their model...

Some cultural goods, like clothes and films, are consumed socially and are thus characterized by the same consumption network externalities as languages. At the same time, producers of new cultural goods in any one country draw on the stock of ideas generated by previous cultural production in...

We model home country familiarity with business opportunities in a foreign country as a parameter in a matching process between domestic and foreign firms. We show that as familiarity increases the effect of relative national labor supplies on relative national wages declines, the elasticity of...

When trade involves differentiated products, preferential ties to a group settled abroad facilitate an exporter's entry into the foreign market by providing information and access to distribution channels. This contrasts with the difficulties experienced by an unattached producer unfamiliar with...

A mechanism of endogenous growth suitable for investigation of sectoral or regional interaction is developed. It is shown how the high value placed on production linkages by economic historians might be reconciled with the high value placed on openness (often implying lack of linkages) by...

Based on recent theoretical developments I argue that the average level of human capital is a local public good. Cities with higher average levels of human capital should therefore have higher wages and higher land rents. After conditioning on the characteristics of individual workers and...

Ethnic Chinese networks, as proxied by the product of ethnic Chinese population shares, are found in 1980 and 1990 to have increased bilateral trade both within Southeast Asia and for other country pairs. Their effects within Southeast Asia are much greater for differentiated than for...

I propose a network/search view of international trade in differentiated products. I present evidence that supports the view that proximity and common language/colonial ties are more important for differentiated products than for products traded on organized exchanges in matching international...

Motivated by a characteristic way in which firms in developed countries make their decisions regarding cooperation with potential partners from less developed countries, we design a simple model of a DC firm's search for an LDC partner/supplier and the subsequent relationship between the two...