We analyze interaction effects of birth weight and the business cycle at birth on individual cardiovascular (CV) mortality later in life. In addition, we examine to what extent these long-run effects run by way of cognitive ability and education and to what extent those mitigate the long-run...

We analyze the joint dynamics of religious beliefs, scientific progress and coalitional politics along both religious and economic lines. History offers many examples of the recurring tensions between science and organized religion, but as part of the paper’s motivating evidence we also...

We derive conditions of individual preferences and technology that give rise to a negative correlation between income inequality and environmental protection. We present a class of models (which captures a static model as well as an overlapping-generations model) in which individuals differ in...

We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the policy-maker is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a ‘good jobs’ sector due to the capture of quasi-rents by trade...

The paper studies the optimal education policy of a budget-constrained utilitarian government. Households differ in their income and in the intellectual ability of their children; income is observed by the government, but ability is private information. Households can choose to use private...