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The paper proposes an empirical analysis of the determinants of the adoption of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and their impact on innovation in manufacturing. The analysis is conducted with panel data covering 112 countries. First we show that IPR protection is U-shaped with respect to a country’s market size and inverse-U-shaped with respect to the aggregated market size of its trade partners. Second, reinforcing IPR protection reduces on-the-frontier and inside-the-frontier innovation in developing countries, without necessarily increasing innovation at the global level.

Based on a data set that we collected from the top research institutions in economics around the globe (including universities, business schools and other or- ganizations such as central banks), we document the underrepresentation of women in economics. For the 238 universities and business schools in the sample, women hold 25% of senior level positions (full professor, associate professor) and 37% of junior level positions. In the 82 U.S. universities and business schools, the figures are 20% on the senior level and 32% on the entry level, while in the 122 European institutions, the numbers are 27% and 38%, respectively, with some heterogeneity across countries. The numbers also show that the highest-ranking institutions (in terms of research output) have fewer women in senior positions. Moreover, in the U.S., this effect is even present on the junior level. The “leaky pipeline” may hence begin earlier than oftentimes assumed, and is even more of an issue in the highly integrated market of the U.S. In Europe, an institution ranked 100 places higher has three percentage points fewer women in senior positions, but in the U.S. it is almost five percentage points.

We model consumer choices for cannabis in a risky environment and determine the supply of cannabis under prohibition and legalization. While introducing a legal market reduces the profits of illegal providers, it increases cannabis consumption. We show that this trade-off can be overcome by combining legalization with sanctions against users and suppliers of illegal products, and improvements to the quality of legal products. Numerical applications to the US highlight how our proposed policy mix can control the increase in cannabis consumption post-legalization and throttle the illegal market. The eviction prices we predict to drive dealers out of business are much lower than the prices of legal cannabis in the states that opted for legalization, leaving room for the black market to flourish. Analyzing the compatibility of several policy goals put forward in the public debate, including maximizing tax revenue and minimizing psychotropic consumption, we shed light on the less favorable outcomes of recent legalization reforms and suggest a new way forward.