We investigate the possibility that females and males had a distinct path in the evolution of prosociality and competitiveness. We collected experimental data measuring preferences for individual competition and in-group cooperation for a randomly selected sample of 751 individuals in Sierra...

We document the historical roots and contemporary consequences of masculinity norms: beliefs about the proper conduct of men. We exploit a natural experiment in which convict transportation in the 18th and 19th centuries created a variegated spatial pattern of sex ratios across Australia. Areas...

We examine a novel hypothesis that roots human prosociality in the need to elicit and sustain help from others for the purpose of raising children, i.e. allomaternal care. We design an economic experiment to characterize the relationship between allomaternal care and cooperative behavior among a...

This study assess the impact of a classroom-based positive psychology intervention on improving academic performance by conducting a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) with 899 school-aged children (10-14) years across 29 schools in Pakistan. The study finds limited evidence that the RCT had an...

This paper studies the influence of marine ecology on social institutions of inheritance and descent. In a sample of 79 small-scale horticultural fishing communities in the Solomon Islands, and in samples of 186 to 1,267 societies across the world, we find that coral reef density systematically...

Data from the first post-Arab Spring elections reveal that support for Islamic parties came from richer districts and individuals. We show that standard public finance arguments help explain the voting pattern in these elections and others in the Muslim world. Our model predicts that a voter's...

We exploit a unique historical setting to study the long-run effects of forced migration on investment in education. After World War II, the Polish borders were redrawn, resulting in large-scale migration. Poles were forced to move from the Kresy territories in the East (taken over by the USSR)...

This study explores how initial endowments at the start of transition have shaped reform outcomes and reform trajectories in 27 former communist countries in Europe and Central Asia. Countries of the former Russian Empire that had a large resources sector at the start of transition...

We show workplace culture is gendered. We apply computational linguistic models to listed firms’ reports to an Australian gender-equality agency to construct the first systematic measures of ‘corporate gender culture’—firms’ practices pertaining to the treatment of women across seven...

Can heroes legitimize strongly-proscribed and repugnant political behaviors? We exploit the purposefully arbitrary rotation of French regiments to measure the legitimizing effects of heroic credentials. 53% of French line regiments happened to rotate under a specific general, Philippe P'etain,...