This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves...

Atlantic inversions -- A Creole industrial revolution in the Cuban sugar-mill -- El principio sacarino: purity, equilibrium, and whiteness in the sugar-mill -- From an infrastructure of fees to an infrastructure of flows: the warehouse revolution in Havana harbor -- Wrought-iron politics: racial...

May 2000 - A higher share of income for the middle class and lower ethnic polarization are empirically associated with higher income, higher growth, more education, better health, better infrastructure, better economic policies, less political instability, less civil war (putting ethnic...