We present new data documenting medieval Europe’s Commercial Revolution” using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity, examining the foundation of Germany’s first...

Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory, where Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. County-level data from...

Brain drain is a core economic policy problem for many developing countries today. Does relative inequality in source and destination countries influence the brain-drain phenomenon? We explore human capital selectivity during the period 1820-1909.We apply age heaping techniques to measure human...

Individuals’ choices of educational content are often shaped by the political economy of government policies that determine the incentives to acquire various skills. We first present a model to show how differences in educational content emerge as an equilibrium outcome of private decisions...

Much of the political economy analysis of reform focuses on the conflict of interest between groups that stand to gain or lose from the competing policy proposals. In reality, there is also a lot of disagreement about the working of the policy: in addition to conflicting interests, conflicting...

Infrastructure is the economic growth theory of the market economy. The missing comprehensive approach to infrastructure corresponds to the practiced neglect of the long-term policy objective of economic growth in the economic order of the German social market economy since its creation after...

Die umweltpolitische Debatte leidet unter einem verbreiteten Diskursversagen. Zugrunde liegt eine Moralkonfusion. Sie verstellt der demokratischen Öffentlichkeit den Blick auf die ordnungspolitische Option, das moralische Anliegen einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung - inklusive Klimaschutz - durch...

Divestment ist eine Untergruppe nachhaltigkeitsorientierter Finanzstrategien. Absicht von Divestment ist es, die zum Unternehmenssektor gehörenden Förderer und Nutzer fossiler Brennstoffe so-zial zu brandmarken, um sie zu einem Verzicht auf diese Aktivitäten zu zwingen. Im vorliegenden...