This paper examines why developed countries are monogamous while rich men throughout history have tended to practice polygyny (multiple wives). Wealth inequality naturally produces multiple wives for rich men in a standard model of the marriage market. This paper argues that the sources of...

This paper investigates whether the sources of income, not just the levels, determine whether an individual is monogamous. Our results support the idea that polygyny stunts development by allowing wealthy men to acquire wives rather than investing in child quality.

We examine why developed societies are monogamous while rich men throughout history have typically practiced polygyny. Wealth inequality naturally produces multiple wives for rich men in a standard model of the marriage market. However, we demonstrate that higher female inequality in the...

This paper examines the effect of inequality on the incentives to emigrate according to a person's education and unobservable skills (residual wage). Borjas (1987) shows that higher skilled individuals are more likely to emigrate than lower skilled individuals when the returns to skill are...

The labor market prospects of young, unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s. Crime rates show a reverse pattern: increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s. Because young, unskilled men commit most crime, this paper seeks to establish a causal...

This paper studies the relation between a city's income distribution and its retail price level using panel data. We find that an increase in the presence of lower-middle income households, relative to poor or upper income households, is associated with lower prices. Our findings suggest that...

This paper estimates the effect of the early childhood environment on a large array of social and economic outcomes lasting almost 60 years. To do this, we exploit variation in the living conditions experienced by Yemenite children after being airlifted to Israel in 1949. We find that children...

In May 1991 fifteen thousand Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel in an overnight airlift and sorted in a haphazard and essentially random fashion to absorption centers across the country. This quasi-random assignment produced a natural experiment whereby the initial schooling environment of...