This research shows that linguistic differences can obstruct the diffusion of technology and contribute to disparities in living standards between countries. I use a new measure of lexical similarity known as the normalized Levenshtein distance to show that lexical distances closely track...

This research examines the relationship between droughts, city-level conflict, and local governance in Europe from 900 to 1800 C.E. I use data on local drought intensity recorded at an annual frequency, combined with information on city-level conflict, to show that droughts are robustly...

This research shows that linguistic differences can obstruct the diffusion of technology and contribute to disparities in living standards between countries. I use a new measure of lexical similarity known as the normalized Levenshtein distance to show that lexical distances closely track...