Italy makes for a very interesting case study of the impact of social variables on economic performance. Across its provinces, differences in social and cultural attitudes seem associated to large differences in economic development. We analyze the importance of some social variables on...

This paper analyzes the response of the soybean sown area of Argentina to changes in price incentives and other variables which are relevant for agricultural production. To this effect, VEC models are estimated for some of the main producing provinces and for the country’s total in the period...

This paper analyzes the role of uncertainty in a multi-sector housing model with financial frictions. We include time varying uncertainty (i.e. risk shocks) in the technology shocks that affect housing production. The analysis demonstrates that risk shocks to the housing production sector are a...

This paper examines spatial variations in exposure to toxic air pollution from industrial facilities in urban areas of the United States, using geographic microdata from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators project. We find that average exposure in...

Existing studies in finance have documented the comovement of stock returns of companies headquartered in the same location. The interpretation is that local investors have a “local bias†due to an information advantage on local companies. This paper argues that localized agglomeration...

This paper develops a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms tostudy the interaction between technology adoption and trade in a world of two countriesfacing different technology adoption costs. It shows that a reduction in the technologyadoption cost in one country increases the...

This paper develops a fully-endogenous, variety-expansion growth model with firm-specific quality heterogeneity, limit pricing, and an endogenous distribution of markups.Trade induces only firms with high-quality products to export, whereas firms with low-quality products serve only the domestic...

A parsimonious theoretical model of second degree price discrimination suggests that the business cycle will affect the degree to which firms are able to price-discriminate between different consumer types. We analyze price dispersion in the airline industry to assess how price discrimination...

Do firms employing undocumented workers have a competitive advantage? Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the incidence of undocumented worker employment across firms and how it affects firm survival. Firms are found to engage in herding behavior, being...

This study characterizes the corporate leniency policy that minimizes the frequency with which collusion occurs. Though it can be optimal to provide only partial leniency, plausible sufficient conditions are provided whereby the antitrust authority should waive all penalties for the first firm...