We study the determinants of 19th century mass migration with special attention to the role of institutional factors beside standard economic fundamentals. We find that economic forces associated with income and demographic differentials had a major role in the determination of this historical...

Influenza vaccination could be a cost-effective way to reduce costs in terms of human lives and productivity losses, but low take-up rates and vaccination unintentionally causing moral hazard may decrease its benefits. We ran a natural field experiment in cooperation with a bank in Ecuador,...

We investigate empirically how sellers react to changes in the population of their consumers, identifying the effects of demand composition and demand size with limited information on costs. We show how pharmacists in Italy selectively increase the price of some products when they observe in...

This paper analyzes whether part-time employment is beneficial for firm productivity in the service sector. Using a unique dataset on the Dutch pharmacy sector that includes the work hours of all employees and a hard physical measure of firm productivity, we estimate a production function...

Reference prices constitute a main determinant of patient health care reimbursement in many countries. We study the effects of a change from an "external" (based on a basket of prices in other countries) to an "internal" (based on comparable domestic products) reference price system.We find that...

Governments worldwide are increasingly concerned about the booming CBD (cannabidiol) products. However, little is known about the impact of their liberalization. We study a unique case of unintended liberalization of a CBD-based product (light cannabis) that occurred in Italy in 2017. Using...

Migration is an important and yet neglected determinant of institutions. The paper documents the channels through which emigration affects home country institutions and considers dynamic-panel regressions for a large sample of developing countries. We find that emigration and human capital both...

In this paper we analyse the effects of changes in the institutional design of the educational system on school attainment. In particular, we test whether alternative reforms have increased the average educational attainment of the population and whether various deciles of the education...

This essay investigates the determinants of the growth performance of Africa. I start by illustrating a broader research agenda which accounts not only for basic economic and demographic factors, but also for the role of history and institutional development. After reporting results from...