This paper reports on my replication of the 1997 Sachs and Warner resource curse working paper. Exact pure replication is achieved. A test for statistical replication shows that some of the Sachs and Warner results attempting to determine the cause of the resource curse are not robust to the country sample. A test for scientific replication shows that findings of the resource curse are not sens...

We estimate the development effects of electrification across Brazil over the period 1960–2000. We simulate a time series of hypothetical electricity grids for Brazil for the period 1960–2000 that show how the grid would have evolved had infrastructure investments been made based solely on geography-based cost considerations. Using the model as an instrument, we document large positive effects ...

The analysis of land investment and tenure security usually assumes land scarcity. However, some developing countries have communities with land abundance. This article therefore examines the effects of land abundance for investment and tenure security. The paper develops a formal test of land abundance and estimates a system of three simultaneous equations. The empirical analysis uncovers sign...

In this note we study the distortions in an endogenous growth model developed by Grimaud and Tournemaine (2007), where new pieces of knowledge are produced in a R&D sector and used to reduce pollution emissions. Using this model along with a realistic calibration, we conclude that the economy strongly underinvests in R&D, such that the policy maker would need to implement a strong tax-subsidy s...

Several recent papers have proposed recursive Lagrangian-basedmethods for solving dynamic contracting problems. Thesemethods give rise to Bellman operators that incorporate either a dual inf-sup or a saddle point operation. We give conditions that ensure the Bellman operator implied by a dual recursive formulation is contractive. JEL codes: C61, C73, D82, E61.

We consider the static and dynamic models of Cournot duopoly with tax evasion. In the dynamic model we introduce the time delay and we analyze the local stability of the stationary state. There is a critical value of the delay when the Hopf bifurcation occurs. Mathematics Subject Classification: 34K18, 47N10; Jel Classification: C61, C62, H26

Organic semiconductor nanoparticles provide a potentially scalable approach for photovoltaics that can be processed from aqueous media. Particles of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT):phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) were prepared using two techniques; those produced by a mini-emulsion method contained greater amounts of crystalline P3HT domains with charge generation resembling phase-sep...

We provide necessary optimality conditions for a general class of discounted infinitehorizon dynamic optimization problems. As part of the resulting maximum principle we obtain explicit bounds on the adjoint variable, stronger than the transversality conditions in Arrow–Kurz form. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C60; C61