Research Articles

Are there any articles we're missing? Send us suggestions, whether in English or another language, by emailing Chrispine at crl2 (at) williams (dot) edu, and we'll put them up!

Our Latest Recommendations

Full Article: “Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation”

In this article, 2019 Nobel laureate Michael Kremer looks back to history for an example of a patent buyout: a situation in which the government buys the patent for a technology which would be beneficial to the public, and then places it in the public domain.

Full Article: “Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990”

An earlier paper from Michael Kremer, this paper considers the two main arguments on the nature of population: that more people means more stomachs and thus more pressure, or that more people means more brains and thus more innovation.

Full Article: “The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development.”

This article by Michael Kremer from 1993 draws a parallel from the spaceship Challenger, which exploded due to the malfunctioning of a single piece, to economic development.

Full Article: “Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries”

This article investigates absenteeism among teachers and healthcare workers in many developing countries, and finds it to be a considerable problem.

Full Article: “Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School”

Esther Duflo, Hanna Rema and Ryan Stephen tried to incentivize teachers to go to class by making the children take a picture with the teacher at the beginning and the end of the day, and found that the intervention had made a difference.

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