This paper investigates the impact of land inequality on conflict intensity. A fundamental distinction with the existing literature lies in the nature of inequality under consideration. We investigate how land inequality across landlords only influences the intensity of the fight against a rebel...

Using US data of media's coverage of politics and individual survey data, the authors document that in the states with a greater coverage of politics, citizens especially exposed to newspapers have more polarized preferences, partly coming from better political knowledge, and resulting in a...

The authors use US data on media coverage of politics and individual survey data to document that citizens exposed to more politicized newspapers have more extreme political preferences. This polarization effect of media is mainly driven by individuals who harbor liberal opinions reading more...

This paper studies the impact of optimism on occupational choice using a general equilibrium framework. The model shows that optimism has four main qualitative effects: it leads to a misallocation of talent, drives up input prices, raises the number of entrepreneurs, and makes entrepreneurs...

Teamwork has become increasingly important in modern organizations and the labor market. Yet little is known about the role of self-confidence in teamwork. In this paper, we present evidence from a laboratory experiment using a team effort task. Effort and ability are complements and there are...

This paper departs from the standard profit-maximizing model of firm behavior by assuming that firms are motivated in part by personal animosity-or respect-towards their competitors. A reciprocal firm responds to unkind behavior of rivals with unkind actions (negative reciprocity), while at the...