The typical narrative regarding the evolution of world trade prior to World War II refers to a secular rise that started around 1870 and a subsequent collapse that began in 1914. This narrative, though, is based on measures of trade openness that do not fully take into account purchasing power...

The typical narrative regarding the evolution of world trade prior to World War II refers to a secular rise starting around 1870 and a subsequent collapse beginning in 1914. This narrative, however, is based on measures of trade openness that do not fully take into account purchasing power...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <p>To what extent does the cultural composition of a society impose a constraint on its long-run growth potential? We study this question in the context of an innovation-based model of growth where cultural attitudes are endogenously transmitted from one generation to the...</p>

Are open economies characterized by superior economic performance in the long-run? This paper revisits this important question from the point of the view of unified growth theory. Contrary to other recent attempts to study this question, the paper considers two distinct channels through which...

The typical narrative regarding the evolution of world trade prior to World War II refers to a secular rise that started around 1870 and a subsequent collapse that began in 1914. This narrative, though, is based on measures of trade openness that do not fully take into account purchasing power...

This research studies the dynamic interplay between the evolution of risk attitudes and the process of economic development. This is achieved by integrating an endogenous growth model with a cultural transmission mechanism that captures how parents shape the risk attitudes of their children in...

This paper critically assesses the role of culture in determining the quality of institutions. Employing various measures of cultural differences, I find that only differences related to the degree of individualism in society and the extent to which inequality in the distribution of power is...

In this paper we examine the foreign bias in international asset allocation. Following extant literature in behavioral finance, we argue that a society's culture and the cultural distance between two markets play an important role in explaining the foreign bias. In particular, we hypothesize...

Well-functioning institutions, both formal (i.e. rule of law) and informal (i.e. trust), facilitate economic exchange. To investigate the nature of the relationship between formal and informal institutions, we analyze bilateral trade patterns in a sample of 16 European countries between...