The size of the average American household has fallen dramatically - from six in 1850 to three in 2000. To explain this decline we model households as collections of roommates who share the costs of household public goods. If private goods are more income elastic than public goods, as we...

The nineteenth century witnessed dramatic improvements in the legal rights of married women. Given that these changes took place long before women gained the right to vote, they amounted to a voluntary renouncement of power by men. In this paper, we investigate men's incentives for sharing power...

This paper tracks the economic status of American Jewry over the past three centuries. It relies on qualitative material in the early period and quantitative data since 1890. The primary focus is on the occupational status of Jewish men and women, compared to non-Jews, with additional analyses...

Die ehemaligen “Stahl-Städte“ Sheffield in Großbritannien und Pittsburgh in den USA kämpfen um Wachstum und den Aufbau einer modernen, wissensbasierten Wirtschaftsstruktur. In den 1970iger und frühen 1980er Jahren erlebte deren traditionelle Industrie einen Niedergang, welche die...