Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes, researchers have been unable to directly assess these predictions because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. In...

We study the evolution of belief systems that suppress productive effort. These include concerns about the envy of others, beliefs in the importance of luck for success, disdain for competitive effort, and traditional beliefs in witchcraft. We show that such demotivating beliefs can evolve when...