Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants...

This paper builds an age-structural model of human population genetics in which agents are endowed with a high-dimensional genome that determines their cognitive and physical characteristics. Young adults optimally search for a marriage partner, work for firms, consume goods, save for old age...

This paper presents a growth model in which property rights are insecure and costly to enforce. Losses of property provide the impetus to establish institutions which seek to enforce property rights. Institutions are shown to implement policies that enforce property rights. The model establishes...

Recent biomedical research shows that roughly three-quarters of cognitive abilities are attributable to genetics and family environment. This paper presents a theory of growth in which human capital is determined by inheritable factors and family size. The distribution of income is shown to...

The transition to market-oriented economies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, like the Great Depression in the U.S. and Germany in the 1930s, generated sharp declines in real incomes and a corresponding drop in fertility. This is contrary to the robust...

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, <i>Moral Markets</i> makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most...

This essay uses a political economy model to study the relationship between urbanisation and demographic change in China. The model identifies political stability and government capacity as two crucial factors that shape family decisions regarding the number of children. As population growth and...

A formal dynamic theory of the transition from a developing autocracy to democracy is presented in the context of a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium growth model. The theory shows that the primary determinants affecting the timing of democratic transitions are per capita income, the...