This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in...

Religious considerations affect the decision to immigrate as well as the choice of destination country, and religious behaviors change as immigrants adjust to the economic context of their new country. This paper considers the interaction between the Economics of Religion and the Economics of...

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv) a higher...

Egyptian youth played a central role in the Arab Spring (AS) uprisings, yearning for changes in the political system and for better economic conditions. This paper investigates the perceptions of young Egyptians about the AS. The empirical analysis uses a bivariate ordered probit model to...

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of an intervention that was targeted at a specific group of Dutch Social Assistance (SA) recipients with debt problems. With a large share of the income gains of work resumption were transferred to the creditors, these individuals experienced a strong a...

This paper studies the direct impact of households' debt on consumption over the business cycle. We use household-level panel data for Spain, and focus on a interesting period of analysis, 2002-2017, characterized by large variations in leverage, consumption, and asset prices. We find that debt...

The onset of the housing and subsequent financial crisis in 2008 marked the steepest economic downturn in the United. States, since the Great Depression in the late 1920s and 1930s. This most recent financial crisis has been characterized by massive layoffs and displacement. Given the depth of...

New York City is the hot spot of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. This paper merges information on the number of tests and the number of infections at the New York City zip code level with demographic and socioeconomic information from the decennial census and the American Community...

Economic theory has identified a number of channels through which openness to international financial flows could raise productivity growth. However, while there is a vast empirical literature analyzing the impact of financial openness on output growth, far less attention has been paid to its...