A snapshot at figures of immigration (Aliyah) to the Land of Israel (Palestine) and to the State of Israel reveals the following: between 1882-1947, in successive waves of immigration, some 543,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine, joining the 24,000 who lived there. During the first three years of...

The demographic history of the Jews in the Middle Ages may be characterized by two main phenomena: i) a sharp drop in the number of Jews until the beginning of the modern period, due mainly to conversions; and, ii) early urbanization. Until now, these features have been analyzed as primarily...

This paper is concerned with trends over the post-WWII period in the employment of American Jews as College and University teachers and in their receipt of the PhD. The empirical analysis is for PhD production from 1950 to 2004 and Jews are identified by the Distinctive Jewish Name (DJN)...

Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal connections matter for lending of last resort, highlighting the importance of governance for...

This Forum aims to systematically describe and analyse the evolution of national financial systems within the EU over the past three decades. It analyses the processes of financialisation that have dominated this period as well as the causes and consequences of the financial crisis from the...

This article analyzes the economics of badmouthing in the context of the pre-1914 French capital market. We argue that badmouthing was a means through which racketeering journals sought to secure property rights over issuers' reputation. We provide a theoretical study of the market setup that...

This paper develops a new insight enabling the empirical study of media capture: minority shareholders of newspapers and readers face similar risks. Both are adversely affected when corrupt insiders use the newspaper for personal profit and receive invisible revenues. This means that relevant...

This paper documents the major features of Jewish economic history in the first millennium to explain the distinctive occupational selection of the Jewish people into urban, skilled occupations. We show that many Jews entered urban occupations in the eighth-ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire...