An ongoing debate in employment policy is whether promoting small and medium enterprises creates more employment. Do small enterprises generate more employment growth than larger firms? We use the elimination of small-scale industry (SSI) promotion in India to address this question. For 60...

The new trade theory emphasizes the role of market-share reallocations across firms ("stealing") in driving productivity growth, while the older literature focused on average productivity improvements ("learning"). We use comprehensive, firm-level data from India's organized manufacturing sector...

The devastation caused by hurricanes during the 2004 and 2005 seasons has been unprecedented and is forcing the insurance industry to reevaluate the role that it can play in dealing with future natural disasters in the United States. As shown in Table 1 the four hurricanes that hit Florida in...

This paper examines the role that insurance has played in dealing with terrorism before and after September 11, 2001, by focusing on the distinctive challenges associated with terrorism as a catastrophic risk. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA) was passed by the U.S. Congress in...

In an interdependent world the risks faced by any one agent depend not only on its choices but also on those of all others. Expectations about others' choices will influence investments in risk-management, and the outcome can be sub-optimal investment all round. We model this as the Nash...

This paper discusses new challenges we face with terrorism as a catastrophic risk by focusing on risk assessment, risk management as well as risk financing issues. The special characteristics of terrorism compared with major natural hazards call for the development of public-private...

This paper extends our earlier analysis of interdependent security issues to a general class of problems involving discrete interdependent risks with heterogeneous agents. There is a threat of an event that can only happen once, and the risk depends on actions taken by others. Any agent's...

Much of the property damage from wildfires occurs when fires spread into built up areas, the wildland urban interface. Fire spread within such areas occurs from house to house, as embers from one burning structure ignite neighboring ones. Actions can be taken to mitigate the chances that a given...

This paper describes the results of a web-based multi-period insurance purchasing experiment focusing on how individuals make insurance choices for low-probability, high-consequence events. Participants were told the probability and resulting losses of a hurricane occurring and were informed...

Utilizing theory and empirical insights from psychology and behavioral economics, this paper examines individuals' cognitive and motivational barriers to adopting climate change adaptation and mitigation measures that increase consumer welfare. We explore various strategies that take into...