This paper analyzes welfare-state determinants of individual attitudes towards immigrants - within and across countries - and their interaction with labor-market drivers of preferences. We consider two different mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of...

I analyze individual attitudes towards trade and immigration in comparative terms. I find that individuals are on average more pro-trade than pro-immigration across several countries. I identify a key source of this difference: the cleavage in trade preferences, absent in immigration attitudes,...

This paper empirically analyzes both economic and non-economic determinants of attitudes toward immigrants, within and across countries. The two individual-level survey data sets used, covering a wide range of developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects...

Although cross section relationships are often taken to indicate causation, and especially the important impact of economic growth on many social phenomena, they may, in fact, merely reflect historical experience, that is, similar leader-follower country patterns for variables that are causally...

This paper examines the evolving effects of England's Old Poor Law (1601-1834). It establishes that poor relief reduced social unrest from around the late-17th century through the turn of the 19th century, at which point it began to spur population growth and its social stability effects...

This survey summarizes the classical fundamentals of modern deterrence theory, covers major theoretical and empirical findings on the impact of certainty and severity of punishment (and the interplay thereof) as well as underlying methodological problems, gives an overview of limitations and...

Using a nationally-representative panel data set of U.S. high school students (AddHealth data) that contains a relatively large sample of siblings and twins, the paper investigates the impacts of gun availability at home and individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft and damaging property...

To what degree do economists disagree about key economic questions? To provide evidence, we make use of the responses to a series of questions posed to a distinguished panel of economists put together by the Chicago School of Business. Based on our analysis, we find a broad consensus on these...

Evidence from a sample of countries show that people roughly spend as much time watching television as earning their living. Moreover, television viewing and work hours are positively correlated across countries. A simple model based on complementarities in the organization of free time is...

This paper analyzes some of the implications of North American labor market integration for fiscal policy. The economies of Canada and the US are both characterized by highly integrated internal markets for goods and services as well as for labor and capital, and subnational governments in both...