This paper considers the optimal contract when the current (hidden) action of an agent has a persistent effect on the future outcome. In this setting, the current outcome is not only a signal of the current action taken by the agent, but also conveys information about his past actions. The...

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The ensuing war has a devastating destructing impact in Ukraine. This article focuses on the humanitarian cost of war. The article develops a framework for the analysis of the effect of a war on country's human capital. We then...

This paper studies the impact of permanent and transitory shocks to income on parental investments in children. We use panel data on family income, and an index of investments in children in time and goods, from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Consistent with the...

Over the last two centuries, many countries experienced regime transitions toward democracy. We document this democratic transition over a long time horizon. We use historical time series of income, education and democracy levels from 1870 to 2000 to explore the economic factors associated with...

The demographic transition that swept the world in the course of the last century has been identified as one of the prime forces in the transition from stagnation to growth. The unprecedented increase in population growth during the early stages of industrialization was ultimately reversed and...

Composition of the euro area workforce evolves over time and in response to changing labour market conditions. We construct an estimate of growth in euro area labour quality over the period 1983-2004 and show that labour quality has grown on average by 0.6% year-on-year over this time period....

This Paper documents the major features of Jewish economic history in the first millennium to explain the distinctive occupational selection of the Jewish people into urban, skilled occupations. We show that many Jews entered urban occupations in the eighth-ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire...

This Paper analyses the economic issues associated with human cloning and new reproductive technologies. We analyse the incentives for human cloning and its implications for the long run distribution of skills and income. We analyse models of human cloning for different motives, focusing on...

Adding generous government supplied benefits to Prescott's (2002) model with employment lotteries and private consumption insurance causes employment to implode and prevents the model from matching outcomes observed in Europe. To understand the role of a 'not-so-well-known aggregation theory'...

We estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings using the changes in compulsory schooling laws for secondary schools in West German states during the period from 1948 to 1970. While our research design is very similar to studies for various other countries, we find very different...