I investigate the consequences of long-run persistence of a societies’ preference towards cultural goods. Historical cultural activity is approximated with the frequency of births of classical composers during the Renaissance and is linked with contemporary supply of cultural activities in...

Social epistemology is a set of attempts to assign a philosophical meaning to sociological studies of cognitive processes within their social context. These attempts are being made through competition of philosophical interpretations. The choice of interpretation is governed by the desire to...

We experimentally investigate the extent to which social obervability of one's actions and the possibility of social non-monetary judgment affect the decision to engage in rule breaking behavior.  We consider three rule bfeaking scenarios - theft, bribery and embezzlement - in the absence of...

The analysis of successful experiences in urban development shows that one important vector in increasing the popularity of a metropolis, so necessary in urban competition, is the "theatre-logo". "La Fenice" in Venice, Royal Theatre in Madrid, La Scala in Milan, "Globe" Theatre in London,...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that geographical variations in the natural return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on the distribution of time preference...

A market for ideas may be, in a sense, “priceless”, since it may be relying on a somehow different kind of “value standard” (“truth-, goodwill-, beauty-, virtue- seeking”) than the “mundane” intangible serviceability of tangible goods, but, in another sense, it uses labour,...

This paper studies the causal effect of sharing a common native language on international trade. Switzerland is a multilingual country that hosts four official language groups of which three are major (French, German, and Italian). These groups of native language speakers are geographically...