Luis Angeles

Institutions, Property Rights, and Economic Development in Historical Perspective

Institutions, and more specifically private property rights, have come to be seen as a major determinant of long-run economic development. We evaluate the case for property rights as an explanatory factor of the Industrial Revolution and derive some lessons for the analysis of developing countries today. We pay particular attention to the role of property rights in the accumulation of physical capital and the production of new ideas. The evidence that we review from the economic history literature does not support the institutional thesis.

Should Developing Countries Strengthen their Intellectual Property Rights

This paper evaluates the welfare consequences of implementing intellectual property rights in developing countries. The protection of intellectual property in poor countries promises to increase world innovation, but this would not come without costs. Higher prices for consumers in that part of the world are the negative side of this policy.We present a general equilibrium model with two regions (the North and the South) to compare these two effects. Our main contribution is to show that the results will depend on the difference in economic development (represented by labor productivity) between the two regions. The South might suffer a net welfare loss if its productivity level is very low with respect to the North.

Credit expansion and the economy

Credit expansion has been associated with faster economic growth and with a higher occurrence of financial crises – a pair of results which seem to contradict each other. This paper advances an explanation for these results by separating credit to the private sector into credit to firms and credit to households. The empirical analysis shows that credit to firms is responsible for the positive growth effect, while the higher occurrence of crises is mainly due to credit to households. The events of the last decade, where fast credit expansion led to crises and very little growth, can be understood as a shift in the composition of credit towards its household component.

On the Causes of the African Slave Trade

This paper offers an integrated analysis of the forces shaping the emergence of the African slave trade over the early modern period. We focus our attention on two questions. First, why most of the increase in the demand for slaves during this period came exclusively from western Europeans. Second, and of most relevance for present-day development outcomes, why was the overwhelming majority of slaves of African origin. Technological differences in manufacturing technology, the specificities of sugar (and other crops’) production, and the cultural fragmentation of the African continent all play a role in the analysis. Supporting evidence for each of our claims is provided from a broad corpus of relevant literature.

The Great Divergence and the Economics of Printing

While Chinas invention of printing took place several centuries ahead of Europes, it was in Europe where the more advanced printing technology of movable type took hold and where book production reached far higher levels. This article explores the extent to which Chinas complex logographic writing system explains these different outcomes. Using an economic analysis, I show how Chinas preference for block printing technology over movable type can be justified as the rational choice of commercial producers. In addition to this, model simulations also predict that movable type would be used in China under some specific circumstances which closely match the historical record. On the other hand, the use of block printing would not have led to larger printing costs in China, and as such should not be regarded as the reason behind Chinas modest level of book production when compared to Europes.

Competitive provision of public services: cost savings over successive rounds of tendering

ABSTRACT We study the evolution of the cost of public service provision when subjected to a competitive tendering process. We add to the existing literature by analysing cost savings over successive rounds of tendering. Previous results in the literature show that initial cost savings tend to disappear over time with the age of the contract. Our findings suggest that each additional round of tendering will be followed by a renewal of cost savings. Thus, keeping competitive pressure via periodic tendering appears to address the problem.