We study the impact of a large-scale economic crisis on gender equality, using historical data from Kazakhstan in the late 19th – early 20th century. We focus on sex ratios (number of women per man) in Kazakh nomadic population between 1898 and 1908, in the midst of large-scale Russian...

In this chapter, we propose a primer of the treatment that has received in the economic literature the problematic of entrepreneurship and rent-seeking behavior. It comprises the introduction of employed concepts, the discussion of the allocation of entrepreneurs between different types of...

Firm entry and exit flows in the retailing and consumer services may be viewed as market equilibrating processes. Local markets with considerable market room and high unemployment ought to be characterized by high subsequent entry rates and low exit rates. However, lack of entrepreneurial...

Our paper explores the economic conditions that lead third parties to intervene in ongoing internal wars. We develop a formal model that ties together some of the main forces driving the decision to interfere in a civil war, including the economic benefits accruing from the intervention and the...

We study how gradualism -- increasing required levels (“thresholds”) of contributions slowly over time rather than requiring a high level of contribution immediately -- affects individuals’ decisions to contribute to a public project. Using a laboratory binary choice minimum-effort...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To control for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

Assuming th eeventual adoption of the Euro, the paper reviews the run-up and the medium run issues and policy options on the path towards the Euro.

This article reconsiders the definition of lower and upper bound axioms in a production model so that less information about the fairness of allocations is drawn from preferences. Three reference situations (material equality, free access to the technology, average cost pricing) define three...

The authors build a model of child labor and study its implication for welfare and fertility. Assuming there is a trade-off between child labor and human capital accumulation, we derive conditions under which child labor is socially inefficient. Even if parents are altruistic, child labor may...

The paper analyzes theoretically and empirically how a firm level tax calculated on the average wage relative to a pre-set norm may promote employment. The theoretical model generalizes the discussion to the case of a subsidization of the average wage dept under the norm chosen by the...