Using newly available data, we re-evaluate the impact of transition from plan to market on objective and subjective well-being. We find clear evidence of the high social cost of early transition reforms: cohorts born around the start of transition are shorter than their older or younger peers....

The European sovereign debt crisis resulted in policies of fiscal austerity and economic downturn in Greece, marked by a prolonged period of recession and high unemployment. This article explores the social impact of the economic crisis, focusing on its effects on altruism using new...

Although a large body of literature has argued that motherhood has a profound and long-lasting negative effect on the employment and earnings of women, there is little evidence focusing on the post-communist region. This paper exploits the latest round of the EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition...

Education is a fundamental human right and it is a global Sustainable Development Goal to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all.” Many children with disabilities in low-income countries, however, continue to be excluded from educational opportunities at great cost to...

We study the long-run effects of con ict on social attitudes, with World War II in Central and Eastern Europe as our setting. Much of earlier work has relied on self- reported measures of victimization, which are prone to endogenous misreporting. With our own survey-based measure, we replicate...

In "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy", Robert D. Woodberry (2012) claims that the emergence of stable democracies around the world was influenced by conversionary Protestantism. While Woodberry's historical analysis is exhaustive, the accompanying empirical evidence suffers from severe...

Institutions, defined as "the rules of the game in society", drive economic growth and prosperity. Institutions often arise from long-term processes influenced by geography, major historical events, culture, and, less commonly, religion. This chapter reviews the available evidence to demonstrate...