Ebola and plague share several characteristics, even though the second and third plague epidemics dwarfed the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak in terms of mortality. This essay reviews the mortality due to the two diseases and their lethality; the spatial and socioeconomic dimensions of plague mortality;...

This paper examines the time-profile of the impact of systemic banking crises on GDP and industrial production using a panel of 24 countries over the inter-war period and compares this to the post-war experience of these countries. We show that banking crises have effects that induce medium-term...

The paper discusses Evsey Domar's role as a link between economics in the West and in Russia. The Russian heritage he brought with him from Harbin (Manchuria) to the US consisted of an interest in socialism and Russian history. He paid close attention to the 1947 Varga controversy in the USSR....

This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms -Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - and on the period up...

This paper surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - and on the period up...

We study the interplay between scientific progress and culture through text analysis on a corpus of about eight million books, with the use of techniques and algorithms from machine learning. We focus on a specific scientific breakthrough, the theory of evolution through natural selection by...

The historiographical and socio-economic topic of the 1918-1921 agrarian reform, marked by a considerable degree of difficulty due to a multitude of objective, quantitative as well as qualitative factors, represents a point of reference in the research endeavours focused on the social and...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the labor-capital split in national income for 20 countries since the late 1800s. Our main identification strategy focuses on unique historical quasi-experimental events: i) the introduction of universal suffrage, ii) close election wins of left-wing...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the labor-capital split in national income for 20 countries since the late 1800s. Our main identification strategy focuses on unique historical quasi-experimental events: i) the introduction of universal suffrage, ii) close election wins of left-wing...

The global COVID-19 pandemic recalls the Ebola epidemic of 2014-15 and earlier much more lethal plague epidemics. All share several characteristics, even though the second and third plague epidemics dwarfed the both the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak and COVID-19 in terms of mortality. This essay...