In the last 50 years, population and incomes have increased steadily throughout much of the Sunbelt. This paper assesses the relative contributions of rising productivity, rising demand for Southern amenities, and increases in housing supply to the growth of warm areas, using data on income,...

If economic growth relies upon the extent-of-the-market, then openness will decrease the connection between initial income and later growth. Alternatively, learning-by-doing models suggest that wealth will be more positively correlated with growth in open economies, because trade causes advanced...

This paper presents a model of prosecutors' decision-making processes in which prosecutors (both federal and state) internalize some of the benefits of reducing crime, but also carte about developing their own human capital. Since U.S. attorneys make their decisions first, they have the...

In recent years, the field of comparative economics refocused on the comparison of capitalist economies. The theme of the new research is that institutions exert a profound influence on economic development. We argue that, to understand capitalist institutions, one needs to understand the basic...

In the United States, religious attendance rises sharply with education across individuals, but religious attendance declines sharply with education across denominations. This puzzle is explained if education both increases the returns to social connection and reduces the extent of religious...

Social capital is often place-specific while schooling is portable, so the prospect of migration may reduce the returns to social capital and increase the returns to schooling. If social capital matters for urban success, it is possible that an area can get caught in a bad equilibrium where the...

A dynamic linear rational equilibrium model in the tradition of Alonso, Rosen and Roback is consistent with many outstanding stylized facts of housing markets. These include: (a) that the markets are local in nature; (b) that construction persistence is fully compatible with mean reversion in...

The great housing convulsion that buffeted America between 2000 and 2010 has historical precedents, from the frontier land boom of the 1790s to the skyscraper craze of the 1920s. But this time was different. There was far less real uncertainty about fundamental economic and geographic trends,...