I investigate the consequences of long-run persistency of a society's preferences for cultural goods. Historical cultural activity is approximated with the frequency of births of music composers during the Renaissance and is linked with contemporary measures of cultural activity in Italian...

This paper proposes somatic capital as a hitherto neglected variable in the discussion of factors impacting the timing of the Neolithic transition. It develops an evolutionary growth theory that builds on the trade-off between the quantity and the quality of offspring. The theory suggests that...

Recent scholarship on the origins of association football has been marked by a highly ideological debate on its ‘class' nature. The traditional story – of a game created by ‘gentlemen' but taken up, and ultimately dominated, by ‘ruffians' – has been challenged by a revisionist account...

The relationship between training and firm-level employment adjustment given an unanticipated fall in product demand has been central to human capital theory. The most cataclysmic negative output shock occurred in 1929-30. At this time, easily the most important source of United Kingdom general...