Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine was a poor and backward economy. The Great Irish Famine of the 1840s is accordingly often considered the classic example of Malthusian population economics in action. However, unlike most historical famines, the Great Famine was not the product of a harvest...

Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine was a poor and backward economy. The Great Irish Famine of the 1840s is accordingly often considered the classic example of Malthusian population economics in action. However, unlike most historical famines, the Great Famine was not the product of a harvest...

What factors caused the persecution of minorities in medieval and early modern Europe? We build a model that predicts that minority communities were more likely to be expropriated in the wake of negative income shocks. Using panel data consisting of 1,366 city-level persecutions of Jews from 936...

Does a location's growth benefit or suffer from being geographically close to large economic centers? Spatial proximity may lead to competition and hurt growth, but it may also generate positive spillovers and enhance growth. Using data on U.S. counties and metro areas for the period 1840-2017,...

Policy toward asylum-seekers has been controversial. Since the late 1990s, the EU has been developing a Common European Asylum System, but without clearly identifying the basis for cooperation. Providing a safe haven for refugees can be seen as a public good and this provides the rationale for...

Economists have long argued that introducing social insurance will reduce fertility. The hypothesis relies on standard models: if children are desirable in part because they provide security in case of disability or old age, then State programs that provide insurance against these events should...

A new urban revolution begun in the second half of the XX century and it is going to challenge the relation between the size and economic role of cities: on one side, the last decades have witnessed the emergence and the never seen growth of a number of Mega-cities, with more than 9 million...

As is the case in most developed countries, the population of New Zealand is ageing numerically and structurally. Population ageing can have important effects on the distribution of personal income within and between urban areas. The age structure of the population may affect the distribution of...

Nominal and real interest rates in advanced economies have been decreasing since the mid-1980s and reached historical low levels in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Understanding why interest rates have fallen is essential for both monetary policy and financial stability. This paper...

Nominal and real interest rates in advanced economies have been decreasing since the mid-1980s and reached historical lows in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Understanding why interest rates have fallen is essential for both monetary policy and financial stability. This paper...