Using data from 74 countries, we uncover important differences in the association between financial literacy and preferences by the level of economic development. We find that patience is only salient in wealthier countries, i.e. countries with their GDP per capita above the sample median. In...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To control for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

What will be political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in an individual's "impressionable years" (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative effect on confidence in political institutions and leaders. We find similar negative effects on confidence in public...

Immigration policy can have important net fiscal effects that vary by immigrants' skill level. But mainstream methods to estimate these effects are problematic. Methods based on cashflow accounting offer precision at the cost of bias; methods based on general equilibrium modeling address bias...

This paper offers an overview of Alberto Alesina's life and of his scholarly work (§ 1 and 2). It will be argued, that Alberto would have entirely deserved the award of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science, except only for his premature passing away. His foundational contribution was the...