Drought is Africa's most prevalent natural disaster and is becoming an increasingly common source of income shocks around the world. This paper presents new evidence from Africa that droughts are an important component of long run variation in health human capital. I use Census data to estimate...

This paper analyzes the impact of high school household income and scholastic ability on post-secondary enrollment in South Africa. Using longitudinal data from the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), we analyze the large racial gaps in the proportion of high school graduates who enroll in university...

South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy stands as one of the past century's most important political events. The transition has been successful to this point because the new constitution adopted a form of federal governance that has been able to provide protection for the economic...

How persistent are cultural traits? This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many...

We study whether student-advisor gender and race composition matters for publication productivity of Ph.D. students in South Africa. We consider all Ph.D. students in STEM graduating between 2000 and 2014, after the recent systematic introduction of doctoral programs in this country. We...

We link personnel records of the federal civil service to census data for 1907-1921 to study the segregation of the civil service by race under President Woodrow Wilson. Using a difference-in-differences design to compare the black-white wage gap around Wilson's presidential transition, we find...

This paper investigates the economics of pauper apprenticeship in antebellum Maryland and several results emerge. Contrary to some earlier interpretations, the system did not arbitrarily indent poor children. Court officials negotiated contracts that reflected an apprentice's productivity;...

A growing theoretical literature emphasizes the role that leaders play in shaping beliefs and social norms. We provide empirical evidence for such 'civic leadership.' We focus on the Forty-Eighters, a group of political refugees from Germany's failed 1848 revolutions, and their role in the...

This study examines a wide range of health and economic outcomes in a sample of Irish- and African-American Civil War veterans during the postbellum period. The information in our data is from a variety of circumstances across an individual's life span, and we use that to attempt to explain...

We study differences in economic outcomes by perceived skin tone among African Americans using full-count U.S. decennial census data from the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Comparing children coded as "Black" or "Mulatto" by census enumerators and linking these children across population...