This paper aims to study the effect of a major historical event on the Spanish city size distribution, the Spanish Reconquista. This was a long military campaign that aimed to expel Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The process started in the early 1300s and ended around 1500, when the entire...

This paper analyses the prevalence of ‘catastrophic’ out-of-pocket health expenditure in Turkey and identifies the factors which are associated with its risk using the Turkish Household Budget Surveys from 2002 to 2008. A sample selection approach based on Sartori (2003) is adopted to allow...

In this paper, we analyse the saving behaviour of a sample of children drawn from the 2002 and 2007 Child Development Supplements of the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In particular, we focus on the influence of children’s expectations and attitudes towards the future on the total level...

A growing body of literature suggests that office-motivated politicians manipulate fiscal policy instruments in order to seek their re-election. This paper directly examines the impact of the electoral manipulation of the level and composition of fiscal policy on incumbents’ re-election...

Given the UK finance sector is one of the largest in the world, it provides the perfect setting for a study into the nature of the finance sector wage premium. We reveal the pervasiveness of this premium, across all sub-sectors of finance, and across all occupations within finance, and with the...

UK graduate wage inequality has increased over the previous three decades. This paper demonstrates that most of the growth has occurred within degree subjects, with the largest occurring in non-STEM subjects. The paper therefore investigates two potential explanations. The first is the increase...

The theoretical constructs of egalitarianism and altruism are different from each other, yet there may be associations between the two at the empirical level. This paper explores the empirical relationship between egalitarianism and altruism, in the context of health. A representative sample of...

This paper uses a new dataset on Internet flows between cities around the world to study whether electronic communication and face-to-face contacts are substitutes or complements. In order to test these competing hypotheses I estimate a regression of bilateral Internet traffic on physical...

This paper presents a theoretical model and empirical evidence from 22 OECD countries to highlight how governments may use the tradeoff between social and military expenditure to advance their electoral and partisan objectives. Three basic results emerge. First, governments tend to bias outlays...

Social capital is a rapidly expanding research theme within economics and has become a popular concept with policy makers in both developed and developing countries. Despite this growth in popularity, social capital remains a controversial concept among economists. We argue that this is largely...