This paper revisits a part of the analysis by Banerjee et al. (2020), in which they examine the consequences of the nation-wide scale up of reforms to the funds management system (e-FMS) in India's national workfare programme, using a two-way fixed effects specification. They report a...

The word “scapegoat” is defined as “a person made to bear the blame for others,” and similarly, “scapegoatism” refers to “the act or practice of assigning blame or failure to another, as to deflect attention or responsibility away from oneself” (Collins English Dictionary and...

This paper examines the migration and labor mobility in the European Union and elaborates on their importance for the existence of the EU. Against all measures of success, the current public debate seems to suggest that the political consensus that migration is beneficial is broken. This comes...

We show that current differences in trust levels within former Soviet Union countries can be traced back to the system of forced prison labor during Stalin's rule, which was marked by high incarceration rates, repression, and harsh punishments. We argue that those exposed to forced labor camps...

We show that Eastern Orthodox believers are less happy compared to those of Catholic and Protestant faith using data covering more than 100 countries around the world. Consistent with the happiness results, we also find that relative to Catholics, Protestants and non-believers, those of Eastern...

We show that the descendants of ancient farmers may have an interest in marrying among themselves, and thus maintaining the gendered division of labour, originally justified on comparative-advantage grounds by the advent of the plough, even after they emigrate to a modern industrial economy...

This paper reviews the literature concerning the evolution of cultural traits in general and preferences in particular, and the emergence and persistence of rules or norms, from a family perspective. In models where each person is effectively the clone of an existing one (either a parent or...

Bankruptcy restructuring procedures are used in most legal systems to decide the fate of businesses facing financial hardship. We study how bargaining failures in such procedures impact the economic performance of participating firms in the context of Croatia, which introduced a "pre-bankruptcy...

This paper studies the long-term consequences of communism on present-day freedom of expression values in two settings - East Germany and the states linked to the sphere of influence of the former USSR. Exploiting the natural experiment of German separation and later reunification, we show that...

We use the separation and later reunification of Germany after World War II to show that a political regime shapes time preferences of its residents. Using two identification strategies, we find that former residents of the German Democratic Republic exhibit a significantly less pronounced...