This paper examines the effect of a new technology on a labour-intensive service. Comparing primal and dual TFP-growth with final-year social savings, we find that, between 1900 and 1938, motion pictures increased entertainment output (measured in spectator-hours) by at least nine percent...

This paper develops a simple model to analyze how a lack of politi-cal competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. Wetest the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. Inthese data, we …nd robust evidence that lack of political competitionin a state is...

Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in competition and internal rivalry. Driven by deregulation and advances in information technologies, many historical institutional distinctions among financial intermediaries have disappeared or...

If households and firms face different interest rates, there may be mutual gains in forming seniority wage contracts, which facilitate implicit saving by younger workers, who might otherwise save either little or nothing at all at low interest rates. A three-period OLG model is presented with...

...We rely on Matsuyama (1996, 1999) to study the effects on growth and welfareof non distortive tax/subsidy policies. In particular, we are interested ininvestigating the stabilising/destabilising effects of policies aimed at eliminatingeconomic fluctuations. The focus on stabilisation...

[...]We conclude that technological change, combinedwith overall growth in the capital stock, is the most importantfactor driving the growing wage inequality betweenlow-skilled and high-skilled workers. Increased competitionfrom abroad, both from developing and industrializedcountries, appears...

Using a unique longitudinal data set on all manufacturing firms in Slovenia from 1994-2001, this study analyzes how firm efficiency changed in response to changing competitive pressures associated with the transition to market. Results show that the period was one of atypically rapid growth of...

This paper presents a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model with imperfectcompetition and nominal price rigidities in which productivity shocks coexist withmarkup shocks. After analyzing the features of the optimal cooperative solution, we showthat this allocation can be implemented in a...

[...]The branch prices we study are less limited. Increasingly,banks are entering new markets by buying one or morebranches from other banks (Benz 1998). The price of a givenbranch should depend on the branch’s expected profits, andexpected profits, in turn, depend on competition. All...