Standard models of economic development typically ignore geography and transport. In this paper, we argue that we should model the transport sector, as it plays a quantitatively important role.\\ To understand what will determine the importance of the transport sector, consider the transport...

Fifty-eight years ago, Harberger (1954) estimated that the costs of monopoly, which resulted from misallocation of resources across industries, were trivial. Others showed that the same was true for tariffs. This research soon led to the consensus that monopoly costs are of little...

We study the effects of large transportation costs on economic development. We argue that the Midwest and the Northeast of the U.S. is a natural case because starting from 1840 decent data is available showing that the two regions shared key characteristics with today’s developing countries...

Arrow (1962) argued that since a monopoly restricts output relative to a competitive industry, it would be less willing to pay a fixed cost to adopt a new technology. We develop a new theory of why a monopolistic industry innovates less. Firms often face major problems in integrating new...

Does competition spur productivity? And if so, how does it accomplish this? These have long been regarded as central questions in economics. This article reviews the literature that makes progress toward answering both questions.

This article studies the extent to which governments produce goods for the market (that is, the extent of public enterprise production). It concludes that the current literature dramatically understates the role of public enterprises in many low-productivity countries. The current literature...