This paper models corruption as optimal parasitism in organizations where teams of agents are weakly restrained by principals. Each agent takes on part of the role of principal, choosing how much to invest in policing to repress corruption in others and how rapaciously to act when unpoliced...

This paper models an industrial revolution as a qualitative transition from a world where innovation is infrequent and haphazard to one where it is continuous and systematic. Pre-industrial innovation is treated as a social process where an individual's effectiveness as an innovator depends on...

We analyse technological progress when knowledge has a large tacit component so that transmission of knowledge takes place through direct personal imitation. It is shown that the rate of technological progress depends on the number of innovators in the same knowledge network. Assuming the...

Ireland’s relatively late and feeble fertility transition remains poorly-understood. The leading explanations stress the role of Catholicism and a conservative social ethos. Previous studies rely on evidence that is not sufficient to support firm conclusions. This paper reports the first...

In most western societies, marital fertility began to decline in the nineteenth century. But in Ireland, fertility in marriage remained stubbornly high into the twentieth century. Explanations of this focus on the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Irish society. These arguments are often...