Using retrospective survey data that covers 1939, 1950, 1960, and 1971, I compare individual-level changes in employment industry and occupational status in Germany from the beginning of World War II to the post-war reconstruction era dubbed the Economic Miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). This...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on...

We define social reciprocity as the act of demonstrating one's disapproval, at some personal cost, for the violation of widely-held norms (e.g., don't free ride). Social reciprocity differs from standard notions of reciprocity because social reciprocators intervene whenever a norm is violated...

Recently, economists and behavioral scientists have studied the pattern of human well-being over the lifespan. In dozens of countries, and for a large range of well-being measures, including happiness and mental health, well-being is high in youth, falls to a nadir in midlife, and rises again in...

This paper studies aggregate dynamics in a cobweb model where learning takes place through a selection mechanism, by which more successful firms are replicated at a higher rate. The structure of the model allows to characterize analytically the aggregate dynamics, and to compute the effect on...

This paper proposes a new way to think about happiness. It distinguishes between stocks and flows. Central to the analysis is a concept we call ‘hedonic capital’. The paper sets out a model of the dynamics of wellbeing in which bad life-shocks are smoothed by the drawing down of hedonic...