Yongmin Chen and Scott Savage
The Effects of Competition on the Price for Cable Modem Internet Access, Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming

Abstract
Theory suggests that a firm facing competition will raise price as consumer preferences become more diverse, and with high enough diversity a duopolist under product differentiation may price higher than a monopolist. Focusing on the price for cable modem Internet access, with or without DSL competition, and using the standard deviation of education attainment as a proxy for preference diversity, we find empirical support for these results. In markets where cable competes with DSL, the cable Internet price increases with preference diversity. Moreover, the cable Internet price under DSL competition can exceed that without competition when preferences are sufficiently diverse.

Wolfgang Keller
Technology Transfer Through Imports (with Ram Acharya), Canadian Journal of Economics, November 2009

Abstract
We study international technology transfer through R&D spillovers in sixteen countries' manufacturing industries since the early 1970s. The analysis shows that the productivity impact of international technology transfer often exceeds that of domestic technological change, more so in high-technology industries. Moreover, technology transfer is found to be strongly varying across country-pairs and tends to decline in geographic distance, pointing to goods trade as the transfer channel. We directly evaluate this hypothesis, and results suggest that trade is crucial for technology transfer from Germany, France, and the UK, while for the US, Japan, and Canada non-trade channels are more important.

Murat Iyigun
Investment in Schooling and the Marriage Market (with Pierre-Andre Chiappori and Yoram Weiss), American Economic Review, forthcoming, 2009

Abstract
We present a model in which investment in schooling generates two kinds of returns: the labor-market return, resulting from higher wages and a marriagemarket return, defined as the impact of schooling on the marital surplus share one can extract. Men and women may have different incentives to invest in schooling because of different market wages or household roles. This asymmetry can yield a mixed equilibrium with some educated individuals marrying uneducated spouses. When the labor-market returns to schooling rises, home production demands less time and the traditional spousal labor division norms weaken, more women may invest in schooling than men.

Wolfgang Keller
Multinational Enterprises, International Trade, and Productivity Growth: Firm- Level Evidence from the United States (with Stephen R. Yeaple), Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.

Abstract
We estimate international technology spillovers to U.S. manufacturing firms via imports and foreign direct investment (FDI) between the years of 1987 and 1996. In contrast to earlier work, our results suggest that FDI leads to substantial productivity gains for domestic firms. The size of FDI spillovers is economically important, accounting for about 14% of productivity growth in U.S. firms between 1987 and 1996. FDI spillovers are particularly strong in high-tech sectors, whereas they are largely absent in low-tech sectors. Small firms with low productivity benefit more from FDI spillovers than larger and more productivity firms. The evidence for import spillovers is much weaker.

Xiaodong Liu
Efficient GMM Estimation of High Order Spatial Autoregressive Models with Autoregressive Disturbances (with Lung-fei Lee) Econometric Theory, forthcoming

Abstract
In this paper, we extend the GMM framework for the estimation of the mixed-regressive spatial autoregressive model by Lee(2007a) to estimate a high order mixed-regressive spatial autoregressive model with spatial autoregressive disturbances. Identification of such a general model is considered. The GMM approach has computational advantage over the conventional ML method. The proposed GMM estimators are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. The best GMM estimator is derived, within the class of GMM estimators based on linear and quadratic moment conditions of the disturbances. The best GMM estimator is asymptotically as efficient as the ML estimator under normality, more efficient than the QML estimator otherwise, and is efficient relative to the G2SLS estimator.

Murat Iyigun
Luther and Suleyman, Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2008

Abstract
Various historical accounts have suggested that the Ottomans’ rise helped the Protestant Reform movement as well as its offshoots, such as Zwinglianism, Anabaptism, and Calvinism, survive their infancy and mature. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset on violent confrontations for the interval between 1401 and 1700, I show that the incidence of military engagements between the Protestant Reformers and the Counter-Reformation forces between the 1520s and 1650s depended negatively on Ottomans’ military activities in Europe. Furthermore, I document that the impact of the Ottomans on Europe went beyond suppressing ecclesiastical conflicts only: at the turn of the 16th century, Ottoman conquests lowered the number of all newly-initiated conflicts among the Europeans roughly by 25 percent, while they dampened all longer-running feuds by more than 15 percent. The Ottomans’ military activities influenced the length of intra-European feuds too, with each Ottoman-European military engagement shortening the duration of intra-European conflicts by more than 50 percent. Thus, while the Protestant Reformation might have benefitted from – and perhaps even capitalized on – the Ottoman advances in Europe, the latter seems to have played some role in reducing conflicts within Europe more generally.

update:10/29/2009