We investigate the origin and evolution of the legal institution of citizenship from a political economy perspective. We compile a new data set on citizenship laws across countries of the world which documents how these institutions have evolved in the postwar period. We show that, despite a...

Contract law and the economics of contract have, for the most part, developed independently of each other. In this essay, we briefly review the notion of a contract from the perspective of lawyer, and then use this framework to organize the economics literature on contract. The title, Contracts...

A large literature documents persistent impacts of formal historical institutions. However, very little is known about how these institutions interact with ancestral traditions to determine long-term economic and social outcomes. This paper addresses this question by studying the persistent...

The relevance of sunk costs in decision making is one of the major sources of disagreement between neoclassical economists and behavioral economists. We test the importance of sunk costs by examining the role of a player's draft position on his playing time in the National Basketball...

I develop a model of conspicuous consumption to empirically measure the importance of peer beliefs to Americans and Chinese. In the model, a consumer cares not only about the direct utility she receives from consumption, but also about the way her consumption pattern affects her peer group's...

Offenders are more likely than non-offenders to be victims, and victims are more likely than non-victims to be offenders. The overlap between offenders and victims is not well understood in criminology, and in the economics of crime the stylized empirical fact is even widely ignored. The paper...

Anecdotal, empirical, and experimental evidence suggests that offering extrinsic rewards for certain activities can reduce people's willingness to engage in those activities voluntarily. We propose a simple rationale for this "crowding out" phenomenon, using standard economic arguments. The...

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists...

During the last decade knowledge about human behavior from psychology and sociology has enhanced the field of economics of education. By now research recognizes cognitive skills (as measured by achievement tests) and soft skills (personality traits not adequately measured by achievement tests)...

Partnering with a savings product provider in Kenya, we tested the extent to which behavioral interventions and financial incentives can increase the saving rate of individuals with low and irregular income. Our experiment lasted for six months and included a total of twelve conditions. The...