Papers relating the level of democracy to growth do not typically control for defferences within types of polity. This paper examines one important difference, that of regime stability, measured as the longevity of a regime. It is shown that there are initial costs associated with young...

We explore gender differences in preferences related to altruism, fairness, cooperation, trust, coordination, risk and competitiveness in an experiment with a large random sample of the Swedish population. In addition to a baseline treatment, we have treatments where participants are primed with...

Several experimental studies on altruism have found women to be more generous than men. We investigate whether observed gender gaps in generosity can be explained by experimental setting, where some settings are more conducive than others to activating gender identity and social norms. In a...

In this paper the skill distribution is proposed as being fundamental for technological transitions, besides the economic and political variables normally considered. The setting is an endogenous growth model with non-overlapping generations, where agents are heterogeneous with respect to...

We model the formation of teams as a random matching process influenced by the agents’ preferences for team size and gender composition. We test hypotheses regarding gender and team preferences on the patterns of coauthorship in articles published 1991-2002 in three top economic journals. We...

This paper argues that gender-specific educational choices have macroeconomic consequences in terms of economic growth. The presence of a social norm affecting persons choosing gender atypical educations at the university level generates a suboptimal allocation of ability, which lowers...

People cooperate more in one-shot interactions than can be explained by standard textbook preferences. We discuss a set of non-standard preferences that can accommodate such behavior. They are social, in the sense of incorporating the payoffs of other persons; they are also norm-based, in the...

The main question addressed in this paper is how the possibility of investing in tax avoidance affects voting and redistributive outcomes in an economy where the tax rate is determined by a majority vote and taxes go to lump-sum redistribution. The outcome depends on the timing and efficiency of...

This paper examines the long-run determinants of the evolution of top income shares. Using a newly assembled panel of 16 developed countries over the entire twentieth century, we find that financial development disproportionately boosts top incomes. This effect appears to be particularly strong...