We use the UK Labor Force survey to investigate whether the socio-economic outcomes of people born on the 13th day of the month, and of those born on Friday the 13th, differ from the outcomes of people born on more auspicious days. In many European countries, including the UK, such days are...

In this paper, we study the development and underlying drivers of skill premiums in Germany between 1980 and 2008. We show that the significant increase in the medium to low skill wage premiums since the late 1980s was almost exclusively concentrated among the group of workers aged 30 or below....

Heights and body mass index values (BMIs) are now well accepted measures that reflect net nutrition during economic development and institutional change. This study uses 19th century weights instead of BMIs to measure factors associated with current net nutrition. Across the weight distribution...

When traditional methods for measuring economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, heights and BMIs are now well accepted measurements that represent biological conditions during economic development. Weight, after controlling for height, is an alternative measure to BMI for current net...

Much has been written about the modern obesity epidemic, and historical BMIs are low compared to their modern counterparts. However, interpreting BMI variation is difficult because BMIs increase when weight increases or when stature decreases, and the two have different implications for human...

According to empirical studies, the life cycle of labor supply volatility exhibits a U-shaped pattern. This may lead to the conclusion that demographic change induces a drop in output volatility. We present an overlapping generations model that replicates the empirically observed pattern and...

We use duration models on a well-known historical dataset of more than 15,000 families and 60,000 births in England for the period 1540–1850 to show that the sampled families adjusted the timing of their births in accordance with the economic conditions as well as their stock of dependent...

We provide evidence that lower fertility can simultaneously increase income per capita and lower carbon emissions, eliminating a trade-off central to most policies aimed at slowing global climate change. We estimate the effect of lower fertility on carbon emissions accounting for the fact that...

The historical increase in emissions is for one-fourth attributable to the growth of emissions per person, whereas three-fourths are due to population growth. This striking evidence is not represented in the majority of climate-economic studies, which mostly neglect the environmental...

The Black Death killed 40% of Europe’s population between 1347-1352, making it one of the largest shocks in the history of mankind. Despite its historical importance, little is known about its spatial effects and the effects of pandemics more generally. Using a novel dataset that provides...