How and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions? This paper … (as opposed to limited) morality are widespread in societies that were ruled by non-despotic political institutions in the … distant past. Second, well functioning institutions are often observed in countries or regions where individual values are …

fails to identify a single ‘southern’ culture but points to a ‘northern’ culture. Our findings support the relevance of … cultural predispositions for financial behavior; and convergence of behavior over time in the face of common institutions, even … for countries with great cultural distance from the country that created those institutions. …

’s conjecture that today marked differences in social capital between the North and South of Italy were due to the culture of …

innovation in an individualist culture. This cultural effect may offset the negative effects of bad institutions on growth … effect between culture and institutions. … individualism on growth through innovation. Using genetic data as instruments for culture we provide strong evidence of a causal …

How do firms' sales interact across markets? Are foreign and domestic sales complements or substitutes? Using a large … firms' demand on foreign markets to instrument yearly variations in exports. We use alternatively as instruments product …

Centralized markets with large numbers of buyers and sellers are generally thought of as being competitive and well …-functioning. However, an important role of centralized markets is matching heterogeneous products, such as fish, to buyers of these …

This paper examines the properties of exams and markets as alternative allocation devices under borrowing constraints …. Exams dominate markets in terms of matching efficiency. Whether aggregate consumption is greater under exams than under … markets depends on the power of the exam technology; for a sufficiently powerful test, exams dominate markets in terms of …