Using data from the US commodity flow surveys, we show that the historical Union-Confederacy border lowers contemporaneous trade between US states by about 16 percentrelative to trade flows within the former alliances. Amongst one million placebos, thereis no other constellation of state...

Spätestens seit dem letztjährigen Auftritt von Conchita Wurst mit ihrem provokanten Mix aus männlichen und weiblichen Zügen hat der Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in ganz Europa Aufmerksamkeit erregt. Neben der großen öffentlichen Teilnahme existieren aber auch eine ganze Reihe...

Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper contributes to a growing literature on its "dark side". We examine the role of social capital in the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. We analyze Nazi Party entry in a cross-section of cities,...

This paper analyses the connection between legal origins and generalized trust. Based on recent results of institutions and trust research it argues that legal origins and trust are connected via the beliefs of agents. Next, it develops hypotheses about a complex and self-reinforcing causal...

Why does inequality vary across societies? We advance the hypothesis that in a market economy, where earning differentials reflect variations in productive traits, a significant component of the differences in income inequality across societies can be attributed to variation in societal...

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was one of the most devastating conflicts of the twentieth century, yet little is known about its long-term legacy. We show that the war had a long-lasting effect on social capital, voting behavior and collective memory. To this end we use geo-located data on...

I examine empirically the role of historical political centralization on the likelihood of modern civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. I combine a wide variety of historical sources to construct an original measure of long-run exposure to statehood at the sub-national level. I then exploit...

Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper connects a growing literature on the “dark side” of social capital with institutional change. We examine the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. Using new data on Nazi Party entry in a...

In this paper, we analyze the long-run effects of Western and Japanese imperial expansion on the survival of Confucian values in China and Taiwan. Mainland China and Taiwan had been under the rule of the Qing dynasty and shared the same culture and societal structure before the onset of imperial...

In the course of history a large number of politicians has been assassinated. A rational choice analysis is used to distinguish the expected marginal benefits of killing, and the marginal cost of attacking a politician. The comparative analysis of various equilibria helps us to gain insights...