The 25 years after World War II witnessed strong labour market institutions and beneficial labour market outcomes - high wage growth and integration of low-skilled immigrants. Then came the macro shocks of the mid-1970s. Labour market outcomes deteriorated as full-time employment-population...

This paper examines the effect of female human capital endowment on the groom price or dowry by using a newly available data set that was created by surveying the middle-class residents of Patna, Bihar. The estimates based on the OLS and 2SLS suggest the existence of positive association between...

In this paper we consider the way in which authorities arise in response to the need for coordination. In a model of local interaction, an authority is understood as a self-enforcing coordination selection structure, where the threat of violence ensures compliance. Such authorities form if...

This paper argues that scarcities for non-transferable fixed-supply goods such as land, infrastucture and social capital, may affect European unemployment in two, mutually enforcing, ways. Firstly the existence of minimum non-transferable capital requirements per worker implies that in a growing...

We study all-pay auctions with budget-constrained bidders who have access to fair insurance before bidding simultaneously over a prize. We characterize a unique equilibrium for the special cases of two bidders and one prize, show existence and a heuristic for finding an equilibrium in the case...

A distinction between individual and communal aspects of social capital is introduced, and their roles in production explored. Contacts are required to transact. contact formation and replacement are mediated by either market institutions or, less efficiently, by informal networks. Replacement...

In this paper, we relate the differential development of market and planning systems to the creation and destruction of contacts. In our general equilibrium model, a greater stock of relational capital (business contacts) increases the sold output of a representative firm. Besides this direct...

This paper links two concepts of social capital to economic development. Social Capital (SC) appears in the litrature, on the individual level, as the number contacts of an agent has and his ability to raise contacts and, on the community level, as norms that help a society to function. In our...

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high-skilled workers. this option serves as an insurance against unemployment caused by labor market frictions and hence increases the incentives for education. We show within a matching model that reducing the start-up costs...

Old elites can block changes, but not all do. Why is it that stronger elites may allow more changes than weaker elites? Why do economies with larger stocks of natural resources not grow faster than economies poorer in natural resources? We argue that old elites hold some power to extract rents...