Does fractionalization change over time? If so, are there any substantial implications foreconomic performance? To answer such questions, we construct a new panel data set withfractionalization measures for 26 former communist countries covering the period from 1989to 2002...

We study the health effects of the spread of democratic institutions and the extension of voting rights in 15 European countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. We employ both cross country and cohort variation in heights and employ a new instrument for democracy and the extension of...

This chapter reviews the existing empirical evidence on how social insurance affects health. Social insurance encompasses programs primarily designed to insure against health risks, such as health insurance, sick leave insurance, accident insurance, long-term care insurance and disability...

This paper studies the relationship between people's beliefs about the quality of their institutions, as measured by corruption perceptions, and preferences for redistribution in Latin America. Our empirical study is guided by a theoretical model which introduces taxes into Foellmi and...

This paper offers a thesis for why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per capita GDP as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth, where "human capital" is the engine of growth. By human capital we mean an intangible asset, best...

We study a recent recruitment drive for public sector positions in Mexico. Different salaries were announced randomly across recruitment sites, and job offers were subsequently randomized. Screening relied on exams designed to measure applicants' intellectual ability, personality, and...

This paper estimates the exogenous effect of schooling on reduced incidence of hypertension. Using the changes in the minimum school-leaving age law in the United Kingdom from age 14 to 15 in 1947, and from age 15 to 16 in 1973, as sources of exogenous variation in schooling, the regression...

In their survey of the literature on ethnic fractionalization and economic performance, Alesina and La Ferrara (JEL 2005) identify two main directions for future research. One is to improve the measurement of diversity and the other to treat diversity as an endogenous variable. This paper tries...

We assess whether public sector employees have a stronger inclination to serve others and are more risk averse than employees in the private sector. A unique feature of our study is that we use revealed rather than stated preferences data. Respondents of a large-scale survey were offered a...

This paper presents a simple conceptual framework intended for describing individuals' subjective evaluations of occupational wage inequality and their demand for redistribution. Most importantly, the framework explicitly allows for the distinction between individuals' perceptions and their...