How do geographic and historical-cultural factors shape new business formation? Using novel data on new business registrations, we document that 75% of the variation in new business formation is explained by time-invariant county-level factors and examine the extent to which such variation is...

This paper proposes a new framework for studying the interplay between culture and institutions. We follow the recent sociology literature and interpret culture as a \repertoire", which allows rich cultural responses to changes in the environment and shifts in political power. Specifically, we...

The presence of a westward-moving frontier of settlement shaped early U.S. history. In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the American frontier fostered individualism. We investigate the Frontier Thesis and identify its long-run implications for culture and...

Why are certain movies more successful in some markets than others? Are the entertainment products we consume reflective of our core values and beliefs? These questions drive our investigation into the relationship between a society's oral tradition and the financial success of films. We combine...

The United States is among the most individualistic societies in the world. However, unlike Western European individualism, which is imbued with moral universalism, America's "rugged individualism" is instead particularistic. We link this distinctive cultural configuration to the country's...

For many Americans the question of when to claim Social Security benefits is one of the most consequential financial decisions they will ever face. While acknowledging that individuals differ in terms of optimal timing for starting Social Security benefits, many economists argue that an average...

A booster of the COVID-19 vaccine targeting the prevailing Omicron variant did not become available in the United States until a year after the variant was first detected. This pattern of developing, testing, and distributing a variant-specific booster may become the default response to further...

We conduct an interactive online experiment framed as an employment contract between employer and worker. Subjects from the US, India, and Africa are matched in pairs within and, in some cases, across countries. Employers make a one-period offer to a worker who can either decline or choose a...

Using a small empirical model of inflation, output, and money estimated on U.S. data, we compare the relative performance of monetary targeting and inflation targeting. The results show that monetary targeting would be quite inefficient, with both higher inflation and output variability. This is...

We review the literature on the empirical characteristics of the global financial cycle and associated stylized facts on international capital flows, asset prices, risk aversion and liquidity in the financial system. We analyse the co-movements of global factors in asset prices and capital flows...