We study quot;habituationquot; to income and to status using individual panel data on the happiness of 7,812 people living in Germany from 1984 to 2000. Specifically, we estimate a quot;happiness equationquot; defined over several lags of income and status and compare the long run effects. We...

Around the world, as in the United States, concern is growing about who gets health care. Individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds face distressingly different prospects of living a healthy life. Disparities in various measures of health between the privileged and the deprived still...

Previous studies of recent U.S. trends in intergenerational income mobility have produced widely varying results, partly because of large sampling errors. By making more efficient use of the available information in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we generate more reliable estimates of the...

We conducted a resume correspondence experiment to measure discrimination in hiring faced by Indigenous Peoples in the United States (Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians). We sent employers realistic 13,516 resumes for common jobs (retail sales, kitchen staff, server, janitor,...

We document that rules for leadership succession in ethnic societies that antedate the modern state predict contemporary political regimes; leadership selection by election in indigenous societies is associated with contemporary representative democracy. The basic association, however, is...

In the late 1980s, a series of legal rulings favorable to tribes and the subsequent passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 legalized gaming operations on reservations in many states. Today, there are over 310 gaming operations run by more than 200 of the nations' 556...

Using a unique firm-level dataset from China's quot;Silicon Valley,quot; we investigate how multinational enterprises (MNEs) affect local entrepreneurship and Ramp;D activities upon entry. We find that Ramp;D activities of MNEs in an industry stimulate entry of domestic firms into the same...

Work in positive psychology decomposes hope into aspirations, agency, and pathways. Operating in the context of an economic model developed with this framework, we review the literature on hope from philosophy, theology, psychology, and its relationship to emerging work on aspirations in...

We use longitudinal data from the 1984 through 2007 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine how occupational status is related to the health transitions of 30 to 59 year-old U.S. males. A recent history of blue-collar employment predicts a substantial increase in the probability...

Recent research shows that health at birth is affected by many factors, including maternal education, behaviors, and participation in social programs. In turn, endowments at birth are predictive of adult outcomes, and of the outcomes of future generations. Exposure to environmental pollution is...