New York City is the hot spot of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. This paper merges information on the number of tests and the number of infections at the New York City zip code level with demographic and socioeconomic information from the decennial census and the American Community...

A growing literature relies on natural experiments to establish causal effects in macroeconomics. In diverse applications, natural experiments have been used to verify underlying assumptions of conventional models, quantify specific model parameters, and identify mechanisms that have major...

In settings with poor formal contract enforcement, profitable investments are likely unrealized. While social closeness can mitigate contractual incompleteness, we examine how to improve the preponderance of cases where contracting parties cannot rely upon social ties. We ask if a community can...

This paper uses confidential Census data, specifically the 1990 and 2000 Census Long Form data, to study the demographic processes underlying the gentrification of low-income urban neighborhoods during the 1990's. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis is conducted at the more refined...

In The Bell Curve Herrnstein and Murray argue that a youth's intelligence (IQ) is a more important determinant of social and economic success in adulthood than is the socioeconomic status (SES) of his or her parents. Herrnstein and Murray base this conclusion on comparison of effects of IQ score...

This study examines how the economic effects of elections in rural China depend on voter heterogeneity, for which we proxy with religious fractionalization. We first document religious composition and the introduction of village-level elections for a nearly nationally representative sample of...

This paper explores the relationship between openness to trade and to immigration on income per person. To address endogeneity concerns we extend the instrumental-variables strategy first used by Frankel and Romer (1999). We show that distance (geographical and cultural) can be used to build a...

We document a statistical association between the severity of the persecution and mass murder of Jews (the Holocaust) by the Nazis during World War II and long-run economic and political outcomes within Russia. Cities that experienced the Holocaust most intensely have grown less, and cities as...

Many social commentators have raised concerns over the possibility that increased sorting in a society can lead to greater inequality. To investigate this we construct a dynamic model of intergenerational education acquisition, fertility, and marital sorting and parameterize the steady state to...

This paper deals with the labor market entrance of young people in the Federal Republic" of Germany. The main focus is on failures during this stage. First, an overview of the youth" labor market in Germany is given. Then, the transition from vocational training to work is" analyzed: The...