Social relationships channel information, influence, and access to scarce resources. As a consequence, social networks - the patterns of these relationships across the members of a community - influence who comes up with important innovations, whether and how rapidly those innovations get...

Early modern information exchange was a potentially costly transaction with little legal infrastructure available to enforce cooperation. We analyze patterns of informal information exchange to assess the role of relational and institutional governance systems and uncertainty in encouraging...

Social relationships channel information, influence, and access to scarce resources. As a consequence, social networks – the patterns of these relationships across the members of a community – influence who comes up with important innovations, whether and how rapidly those innovations get...

As we move into the 21st century, the world seems a smaller place - transportation costs continue to fall, fiber optic networks speed information around the planet, and corporations operate on a global scale. One might reasonably ask whether location really matters anymore. Despite these trends...

We examine the extent to which financial market development impacts the diffusion of 16 major technologies, looking across 17 countries, from 1870 to 2000. We find that greater depth in financial markets leads to faster technology diffusion for more capital-intensive technologies, but only in...