Using patent citation data for the U.S., we test whether knowledge spillovers in biotechnology are sensitive to distance, and whether that sensitivity has changed over time. Controlling for self-citation by inventor, assignee and examiner, cohort-based regression analysis shows that physical...

Climate disaster events are expected to displace at least 1.2 billion people by 2050. However, “climate refugees,” or individuals displaced in the context of disasters and climate change, lack international legal recognition and protection. In 2020, an international tribunal acknowledged in...

This paper derives the speed of convergence to steady state in the Malthusian world, and provides some rough estimates. The basic message is that the half life of a shock in a Malthusian economy was probably quite long, on the order of two centuries. Various extensions, such as capital...

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

This paper examines the alternative views of fixed versus floating exchange rates presented in Gottfried Haberler's Prosperity and Depression (1937) and Ragnar Nurkse's Interwar Currency Experience (1944). It shows how Haberler presented a model of exchange rates that is an anticipation of the...

The present study analyzes computer performance over the last century and a half. Three results stand out. First, there has been a phenomenal increase in computer power over the twentieth century. Performance in constant dollars or in terms of labor units has improved since 1900 by a factor in...

This study addresses the need for an early warning system of financial distress of nations, amply demonstrated by failures in Mexico and South East Asia. We find that financial ratios of failing nations, and those of failing corporations, display similar patterns. A neural network was trained on...

This study extends the literature by examining the linear and nonlinear effects of natural resource income and the contribution of environmental demands to long-term economic growth in resource-reliant economies (RREs). Data was sourced from 45 RREs from 1970 to 2019 and processed using three...

This paper examines the contribution of 3G and 4G cellular technologies to the smartphone revolution. It relies on quasi-natural experiments in which these technologies were launched at different times and deployed at different rates across countries while the availability of handsets, operating...

In the modern lexicon, money is pure instrumentality, a colorless medium that transparently expresses real value. Contrary to that trope, however, we can get “inside” money: we can reconnoiter it as a structure entailing value that is engineered by certain societies. Taking a...