We study the process that led to the inclusion of merchant towns in the English Parliament, using a novel comprehensive dataset for 549 medieval English towns (boroughs). Our analysis begins with the Norman Conquest in 1066 - an event of enormous political change that resulted in largely...

The purpose of this article is to study the effect of education on labor market participation and household consumption in a rural environment. The Tanzanian Universal Primary Education (UPE) program, which provides variations in education across locations and over time, is used as a natural...

A vast firm productivity literature finds that otherwise similar firms differ widely in their productivity and that these differences persist through time, with important implications for the broader macroeconomy. These stylized facts derive largely from studies of manufacturing firms in wealthy...

Cellular technologies have become increasingly important in the developing world; infrastructure for mobile networks has expanded dramatically over the past two decades giving access to remote areas without previous phone service. Despite this expansion, relatively little is known about the...