To identify the determinants of social capital formation, it is necessary to understand the social capital investment decision of individuals. Individual social capital should then be aggregated to measure the social capital of a community. This paper assembles the evidence that supports the...

Does the economic model of optimal punishment explain the variation in the sentencing of murderers? As the model predicts, we find that murderers with a high expected probability of recidivism receive longer sentences. Sentences are longest in murder types where apprehension rates are low, and...

More than 17 percent of households in American central cities live in poverty; in American suburbs, just 7.4 percent of households live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to be the result of wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap...

Using a sample of Harvard undergraduates, we analyze trust and social capital in two experiments. Trusting behavior and trustworthiness rise with social connection; differences in race and nationality reduce the level of trustworthiness. Certain individuals appear to be persistently more...

Will COVID-19 end the urban renaissance that many cities have experienced since the 1980s? This essay selectively reviews the copious literature that now exists on the long-term impact of natural disasters. At this point, the long-run resilience of cities to many forms of physical destruction,...

Do urban children live more segregated lives than urban adults? Using cellphone location data and following the 'experienced isolation' methodology of Athey et al. (2021), we compare the isolation of students over the age of 16--who we identify based on their time spent at a high school--and...

American cities have experienced a remarkable renaissance over the past 40 years, but in recent years, cities have experienced considerable discontent. Anger about high housing prices and gentrification has led to protests. The urban wage premium appears to have disappeared for less skilled...

American technological creativity is geographically concentrated in areas that are generally distant from the country's most persistent pockets of joblessness. Could a more even spatial distribution of innovation reduce American joblessness? Could Federal policies disperse innovation without...

Commerce requires trust, but trust is difficult when one group consistently fears expropriation by another. If men have a comparative advantage at violence and there is little rule-of-law, then unequal bargaining power can lead women to segregate into low-return industries and avoid...

Will the Opportunity Zone program, America's largest new place-based policy in decades, generate neighborhood change? We compare single-family housing price growth in Opportunity Zones with price growth in areas that were eligible but not included in the program. We also compare Opportunity...