In earlier work (Bénabou, Ticchi and Vindigni 2013) we uncovered a robust negative association between religiosity and patents per capita, holding across countries as well as US states, with and without controls. In this paper we turn to the individual level, examining the relationship between...

The ways in which preferences respond to the varying stress of economic environments is a key question for behavioral economics and public policy. We conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate the effects of stress on financial decision making among individuals aged 50 and older. Using the...

Leaks are pervasive in politics. Hence, many committees that nominally operate under secrecy de facto operate under the threat that information might be passed on to outsiders. We study theoretically and experimentally how this possibility affects the behavior of committee members and the...

This paper investigates the reasons why entry per se is not necessarily good and the evidence showing that innovative startups survive longer than their non-innovative counterparts. In this framework, our own empirical analysis shows that greater survival is achieved when startups engage...

Risk averse investors have to be compensated in higher expected returns when facing investments with higher risk. Education is an important investment therefore we use the results for 16 countries to test the positive relationship between return to education and the risk involved in this...