The relationship between the degree of inequality and the demand for redistribution has been a central question in political science and political economy. The famous median-voter model predicts that higher inequality, reflected in a growing gap between the income of the average and the median...

In applied historical research, geographic units often differ in level of aggregation across datasets. One solution is to use crosswalks that associate factors located within one geographic unit to another, based on their relative areas. We develop an alternative approach based on relative...

We develop a framework to estimate the economic value of a recent zoning reform in the city of Sao Paulo, which altered maximum permitted construction at the city-block level. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that developers file for more multi-family construction permits...

We model networks of relational (or implicit)contracts, exploring how sanctioning power and equilibrium conditions change under different network configurations and information transmission technologies. In our model, relations are the links, and the value of the network lies in its ability to...

We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Motivated by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital, from social and political participation to interpersonal...

We use detailed data from Indonesian cities to study how variation in density within urban areas affects social capital. For identification, we instrument density with soil characteristics, and control for community averages of observed characteristics. Under plausible assumptions, these...

In this paper--the first in a series of two papers that use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to study social capital--we measure and analyze three types of social capital by ZIP code in the United States: (i) connectedness between different types of people, such as those with low vs....

Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility. Here, we analyze the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building upon the analysis in the...