1. The State Monopoly on Violence -- 2. Market Failures and Institutions -- 3. Innovation and the Capitalist Revolution -- 4. Monopoly Power and Competition -- 5. Who Pays for Fixed Costs? -- 6. Insurance versus Incentives -- 7. Reputations and Implicit Contracts -- 8. Adverse Selection -- 9....

Why are people in the richest countries of the world so much richer today than 100 years ago? And why are some countries so much richer than others? Questions such as these define the field of economic growth. This paper documents the facts that underlie these questions. How much richer are we...

This chapter is structured in three parts. The first part outlines the methodological steps, involving both theoretical and empirical work, for assessing whether an observed allocation of resources across countries is efficient. The second part applies the methodology to the long-run allocation...

What obstacles prevent the most productive technologies from spreading to less developed economies from the world’s technological frontier? In this paper, we seek to shed light on this question by quantifying the geographic and human barriers to the transmission of technologies. We argue that...