When the mortality rate is high, repeated interaction alone may not sustain cooperation, and religion may play an important role in shaping economic institutions. This insight explains why during the fourteenth century, when plagues decimated populations and the church promoted the doctrine of...

We estimate long-term effects of Jewish presence in Europe before World War II, using discontinuity at the border of the "Pale of Settlement" area where Jews were allowed to live in the Russian Empire. Current residents of the Pale have lower support for market, and are less entrepreneurial but...

New technologies have not always been greeted with full enthusiasm. Although the Ottomans were quick to adopt advancements in military technology, they waited almost three centuries to sanction printing in Ottoman Turkish (in Arabic characters). Printing spread relatively rapidly throughout...

Poland was divided among three empires—Russia, Austria–Hungary, and Prussia—for over a century until 1918. The partition brought about divergence in culture, institutions, and economic development. We use spatial regression discontinuity to examine, which empire effects are persistent. We...