We use a stochastic frontier approach to study the effects of political and regulatory institutions on aggregate productivity in 39 countries from 1975 to 1990. We show that technical efficiency is positively related to policies supporting laissez-faire and political structures that promote policy stability. Moreover, models of technical efficiency incorporating both measures perform better tha...

We examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the Royal Agricultural Society of England at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939. We find large effects of the prizes on competitive entry and we also detect an impact of the prizes on the quality of contemporaneous patents, especially when prize categories were set by a strict rota...

This paper examines the effect of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the return paid to two different types of skill: general skills, acquired through schooling and work experience, and job-specific skills, acquired by experience in a particular job. Using the UK Labour Force Survey we estimate skill returns in different industries over the period 1994-2001. We evaluate the mar...

This paper aims at re-assessing the relationship between innovation and economic growth by questioning the view equating knowledge to innovation and to regional growth. We rather propose that these linkages are highly differentiated at the regional level and explore this relationship for 262 NUTS2 European regions. Our results confirm that knowledge and innovation are both important drivers of ...

This paper studies whether labor scarcity encourages technological advances, i.e., technology adoption or innovation, for example, as claimed by Habakkuk in the context of 19th-century United States. I de…ne technology as strongly labor saving if technological advances reduce the marginal product of labor and as strongly labor complementary if they increase it. I show that labor scarcity encour...

We review the econometric literature on measuring the returns to R&D. The theoretical frameworks that have been used are outlined, followed by an extensive discussion of measurement and econometric issues that arise when estimating the models. We then provide a series of tables summarizing the major results that have been obtained and conclude with a presentation of R&D spillover returns measur...

We present a model that explains how a cluster moves through a life cycle and why this movement differs from the industry life cycle. The model is based on three key processes: the changing heterogeneity in the cluster describes the movement of the cluster through the life cycle; the geographical absorptive capacity enables clustered companies to take advantage of a larger diversity of knowledg...

This paper provides a model to explain the shakeout of the U.S. ATM and debit card industry, which emphasizes the role that a major product innovation — introducing the debit function in the mid 1980s — played in driving the network consolidation. Consistent with the theory, our empirical findings show that large networks had a better chance of adopting the debit innovation and surviving the sh...

This paper investigates the relationship between telecommunications infrastructure competition, investment and productivity. Using econometric modelling and input-output economics, the analysis examines and measures the extent to which telecommunications has contributed to national and sectoral productivity performance. The main findings from this paper suggests that most industries have benefi...

This paper analyses the credibility of author anonymity provided by double-blind review processes. It is argued that authors have strong incentives to disseminate information about their papers before publication. A sample from two economics journals, both using double-blind review processes provides evidence that author revealing information of most accepted papers is available on the Internet...