We study the distribution and evolution of payments in a Pay-What-You-Want restaurant. Despite missing price tags and despite the option to pay nothing at all, we observe that the vast majority of guests makes strictly positive payments. Over the two years covered by our data, average payments...

This paper presents an application of the hedonic approach to measure the monetary price of social relations. We use micro data for housing and labor markets in the 103 Italian province capitals to estimate the price of relational amenities and construct monetary indices of quality of relational...

In this paper we analyze a two-sector growth model in which the utility function is not additively separable in consumption and “quality leisure time”. Differently from the main body of theoretical literature on quality leisure, we assume that the “productivity” of leisure is not...

This paper tests the relationship between time preferences and crime rates as posited by Davis (1988), whose theoretical analysis suggests that individuals’ attitude towards the future significantly affects their propensity to commit crime. Our empirical analysis is based on a panel of Italian...

The influence of social capital on economic activities has been a central theme in the literature for quite a long time, but the relationship between social connectedness and school choice has not been addressed. If the primary objective of social capital is to create cohesiveness through the...

Hernstein and Murray (1994) famously argued that the division of labor in modern society is determined by individual differences in cognitive ability. This paper shows that differences in cognitive ability can also determine the division of labor in poor urban areas. We estimate the effect of IQ...

Can the average intelligence quotient (IQ) of populations be considered the root cause of international development inequalities? Psychologists and some economic studies have proposed the existence of a link between intelligence quotient and economic development. The paper tests this hypothesis,...

Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan are the only cities in the world that have experienced an atomic bomb attack. This paper explores how this devastating experience affected victims’ tendency to trust others. Individual-level data were used to examine the long-term influence of experiencing an...

We construct a rich dataset covering 47 developing countries over the years 1990–2007, combining several micro and macro level data sources to explore the link between political factors and body mass index (BMI). We implement a heteroskedastic generalized ordered logit model allowing for...

This paper investigates the contribution of property rights (land title ownership) to happiness in Brazil by analyzing the household response to an exogenous change in formal ownership status. It uses a quasi-experimental design to analyze a unique dataset based on Papel Passado, a Brazilian...