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This paper is a first step toward a more fundamental theory of political economy outcomes. We start from the fundamentals of the economy, given by preferences and technology; further, we specify all available technologies for the control of resources - such as armed forces or bribing. We model the interaction of agents in this economy as a game and examine all its equilibria. Equilibrium allocations must be such that individuals maximize their utility and that no group of individuals has the incentive to modify those allocations by (additional) usage of the technologies for the control of resources. The generality of our approach enables us to answer the question 'Is there something about the nature of a country that makes inefficient equilibria inevitable?' We illustrate our approach by applying it to the natural resource curse. The model predicts that inefficient outcomes - in the form of either conflict or a deterrence army solution - will always occur as long as the value of natural resources to capture is positive and the opportunity cost of time - which partly determines soldiers' wages - is finite.

This paper is a first step toward a more fundamental theory of political economy outcomes. We start from the fundamentals of the economy, given by preferences and technology; further, we specify all available technologies for the control of resources — such as armed forces or bribing. We model the interaction of agents in this economy as a game and examine all its equilibria. Equilibrium allocations must be such that individuals maximize their utility and that no group of individuals has the incentive to modify those allocations by (additional) usage of the technologies for the control of resources. The generality of our approach enables us to answer the question "Is there something about the nature of a country that makes inefficient equilibria inevitable?" We illustrate our approach by applying it to the natural resource curse. The model predicts that inefficient outcomes — in the form of either conflict or a deterrence army solution — will always occur as long as the value of natural resources to capture is positive and the opportunity cost of time — which partly determines soldiers' wages — is finite.

This paper offers new insights on a central question in trade and development economics: does increased exposure to foreign competition generate gains in plant productivity? We find that it does. We examine Colombian trade policy from 1977 to 1991, a period during which trade liberalization alternates with increased trade protection in varied ways across industries, to investigate the link between trade policy and plant productivity. Using a rich panel of manufacturing plants, we obtain production function estimates separately across industries that are consistent in face of the simultaneity between input demands and productivity. These estimates are used to derive plant-level time-varying productivity measures for which a systematic component related to trade policy is identified. We find a strong negative impact of nominal tariffs on plant productivity controlling for observed and unobserved plant characteristics and industry heterogeneity. The use of lagged tariffs and the evidence on the political economy of tariff determination in Colombia allow us to argue that the negative impact of tariffs is unlikely to reflect the endogeneity of protection. Plant exit plays a minor role in generating productivity gains in face of lower trade protection. Also, accounting for variation in the Colombian peso's real exchange rate does not weaken the main findings. The negative impact of trade protection on productivity is stronger for large plants relative to small plants, as measured by employment and market shares. The negative impact of trade protection on productivity is stronger for plants in less competitive industries according to Herfindahl indexes and turnover rates. The main findings are robust to the use of effective rates of protection and import penetration ratios as measures of trade protection and openness. Finally, we also find evidence of a negative impact of trade protection on the rate of growth of plant productivity.

"We use the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys data to analyze the employment of both labor and capital in Indian manufacturing. We focus on disparities among states in manufacturing employment patterns, and provide reduced form evidence of their relationship to both (i) institutional constraints, and (ii) productivity"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

AbstractThis paper examines the performance of the service sector in the Eastern European transition economies during the 1997–2004 period. The performance of the service sector as a whole and of its sub‐sectors is very heterogeneous within the region. Service sub‐sectors that are information and communications technology producers or users and those using skilled labour more intensively exhibit the highest labour productivity growth. Our estimates show a positive and significant effect of liberalization on service labour productivity growth that is stronger for sub‐sectors that are more distant from the technological frontier. Service liberalization is also shown to have a positive effect on labour productivity levels and growth of downstream manufacturing industries.

In order to understand women's literature in Portugal since the seventies I am going back to the '60s and '70s with Maria Teresa Horta (b.1937) and to the '20s with Judith Teixeira (1880-1959). My aim is to focus on the poetry written by these writers in two important historical periods: during the troubled years preceding the setting up of dictatorship in 1926 and in the period before the 1974 democratic revolution. For this task I have selected two collections of poems representative of their poetry: Decadência (1923) by Judith Teixeira and Minha Senhora de Mim (1971) by Maria Teresa Horta.