Among the important factors in the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 was an large ethical breakdown in the financial sector that preceded it. The sources of good behavior are multiple but religion ranks high among them. In thinking about the role of religion, most people think first of Judaism,...

Do crises make people more prosocial? And what role does communication play in promoting such attitudes and behavior? These answers matter for post-crisis economic recovery as social capital has been linked to growth. We leverage the incidence of COVID-19 --a multifaceted global crisis-- and...

We propose a model that (i) provides an algorithm for measuring temporal variation in domestic violence incidence based on internet search activity and (ii) makes precise the conditions under which this measure yields less biased estimates of the domestic violence problem during periods of...

The ongoing financial and economic crisis has hit hard the lives of citizens in Eastern Europe and Central Asian (ECA) countries. Economic growth has started to dip, unemployment is rising and government revenues are expected to fall. The crisis is having a direct impact on the ability of...

This research explores the origins of observed differences in time preference across countries and regions. Exploiting a natural experiment associated with the expansion of suitable crops for cultivation in the course of the Columbian Exchange, the research establishes that pre-industrial...

Societies see growing support for populist politicians who advocate an end to globalization. Our behavioral economics model links impatience to voters’ appraisals of an income shock due to globalization that is associated with short-run costs and delayed gains. The model shows that impatient...