We study blockchain-based decentralized governance of a platform where users contribute to the platform's output and incur differential costs that depend on the type of platform's technology. The objective of the platform's founder is to maximize the platform's total output by devising...

We examine the effect of culture on within-firm pay inequality by studying the pay setting behaviors of closely-held firms owned by immigrants in Canada. Using matched employer-employee-owner tax filing data, we show that within-firm pay inequality varies significantly with a firm owner’s...

We study the role of pyramidal ownership structures in the creation of new firms. Our results suggest that pyramids arise because they provide a financing advantage in setting up new firms when the pledgeability of cash flows to outside financiers is limited. Parent companies supply inside funds...

As part of the Single Market Program the European Commission commanded the liberalization and regulatory harmonization of utilities, transport and telecommunication services. This paper investigates whether and how this process affected the productivity of European network firms. Exploiting the...

Many economic analyses use employer-employee data to compare wage and productivity differentials across demographic groups. We apply this approach to assess the importance of ´organizational´ workers, i.e., managing and marketing personnel. The estimates based on 2000-2006 Czech worker-level...

It is well known that highly female fields of study in tertiary education are characterized by higher fertility. However, existing work does not disentangle the selection-causality nexus. We use variation in gender composition of fields of study implied by the recent expansion of tertiary...

This paper reports evidence on the strong tendency of the college educated to match with partners who graduated in the same field of study - a dimension of assortative matching that has been overlooked thus far. We employ Labor Force Survey data covering most EU countries to measure the extent...

Differences in regional unemployment in post-communist economies are large and persistent. We show that within-country regional variation in inherited human capital in four such economies explains the bulk of regional variation in unemployment; we explore potential explanations. Our evidence...

We measure the importance of candidate characteristics listed on ballots for a candidate's position on a slate, for preferential votes received by a candidate, and, ultimately, for getting elected. We focus on the effects of gender, various types of academic titles, and also several novel...

We implement a novel empirical strategy for measuring and studying a strong form of nationalism - the willingness to fight and die in a war for national independence - using name choices corresponding to previous war leaders. Based on data on almost half a million soldiers, we first show that...