This paper investigates relative or absolute happiness.

One theory for why there is a strong education gradient in health outcomes is that more educated individuals more quickly absorb new information about health technology. The MMR controversy in the UK provides a case where, for a brief period of time, some highly publicized research suggested...

Research on self-employment has increased during recent years and particular attention has been paid to self-employment dynamics and the factors influencing entry and exit rates from self-employment. Using a large panel data set for Sweden, this paper investigates variations in recruitment to...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

This paper revisits Bairoch’s hypothesis that in the late 19th century tariffs were positively associated with growth, as recently confirmed by a new generation of quantitative studies (see O`Rourke (2000), Jacks (2006) and Clemens-Williamson (2002, 2004)). This paper highlights the importance...

This paper presents new regional GDP estimates for the Habsburg Monarchy and constructs measures of market potential for its 22 major regions. The paper argues that regional income differentials were significantly larger, that intra-empire catching-up of poor with rich regions was far more...

At the start of the long wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, the taxes available to the British state fell mainly on outlays made by its citizens, upon domestically produced commodities and services. Smaller proportions came from import duties and direct taxes upon their incomes...

Much of the literature on economic change in the post-1945 world is permeated by two ideas: the temporal convergence of per capita incomes across economies and the spatial advance of free trade. For many economists and historians the two are linked: the reduction of trade barriers in the...

Economic convergence has emerged as one of the key debates in the theoretical andhistorical literature over the last decade. Galor identified three forms of long run percapita income convergence: absolute convergence, whereby convergence occursindependently of the initial conditions facing each...