Showing 1 - 10 of 535
We study the connection between economic performance and the quality of government institutions for the sample of 103 Italian NUTS3 regions, including new measures of institutional performance calculated using data on the provision of different areas of public services. In order to address...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010469675
Using data on 100 years of 19th century criminal trials at London's Old Bailey, this paper offers clear evidence of disparate treatment of Irish-named defendants and victims by English juries. We measure surname Irishness and Englishness using place of birth in the 1881 census. Irish-named...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014250081
This research provides an explanation for high literacy, economic growth and societal developments in the Netherlands in the period before the Dutch Republic. We establish a link between the Brethren of the Common Life (BCL), a religious community founded by Geert Groote in the city of Deventer...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009697679
This paper shows how a shorter fecundity horizon for females (a biological constraint) leads to age and educational disparities between husbands and wives. Empirical support is based on data from a natural experiment commencing before and ending after China's 1980 one-child law. The results...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010419016
We study the origins of entrepreneurship (culture) in the United States. For the analysis we make use of a quasi-natural experiment - the gold rush in the second part of the 19th century. We argue that the presence of gold attracted individuals with entrepreneurial personality traits. Due to a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012705583
We investigate the legacy of the former Papal States on modern female condition by comparing Italian municipalities located in a narrow band across the border between the former Papal States and the former Grand Duchy of Tuscany. While in the Papal States gender inequality was particularly...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012620920
We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (the IMF) and a country has for the optimal design of conditional reforms. Our model predicts that when agency problems are especially severe, and/or IMF information is valuable, a centralized control is indeed...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003817754
This paper studies how an institution such as markets affects the evolution of mankind. My key point is that the forces …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011414433
Societies prohibit many transactions considered morally repugnant, although potentially efficiency-enhancing. We conducted an online choice experiment to characterize preferences for the morality and efficiency of payments to kidney donors. Preferences were heterogeneous, ranging from...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011531908
Markets are ubiquitous in our daily life and, despite many imperfections, they are a great source of human welfare …. Nevertheless, there is a heated recent debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. In fact …, competitive pressure on markets may create strong incentives for unethical practices (like using child labor) to increase …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011518078