Banks failed in 2008 because individuals with knowledge of risks were not connected to individuals who had the incentive and power to take corrective action. Evidence of this problem is provided by reports from the Lehman liquidator and The US Government Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission....

The Malthusian theory of evolution disregards a pervasive fact about human societies: they expand through conflict. When this is taken account of the long-run favors not a large population at the level of subsistence, nor yet institutions that maximize welfare or per capita output, but rather...

We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to (more) asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby...

Do environmental initiatives like carbon accounting provide a viable alternative to monetary calculation based on profit and loss? Economic insights about calculation and imputation suggest that they do not provide a reliable, rational guide to action. Non-monetary calculation of the...

We estimate the impact on pilgrims of performing the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Our method compares successful and unsuccessful applicants in a lottery used by Pakistan to allocate Hajj visas. Pilgrim accounts stress that the Hajj leads to a feeling of unity with fellow Muslims, but outsiders...

The paper re-examines the idea that a family can be viewed as a community governed by a self-enforcing constitution, and extends existing results in two directions. First, it identifies circumstances in which a constitution is renegotiation-proof. Second, it introduces parental altruism. The...

Solar geoengineering has received increasing attention as an option to temporarily stabilize global temperatures. A key concern surrounding these technologies is that heterogeneous preferences over the optimal amount of cooling combined with low deployment costs may allow the country with the...

With the number of Syrians who have fled their country since 2011 exceeding 5 million, and no end in sight of the Syrian civil war, there is little expectation that Syrians currently residing outside of Syria are likely to go back soon. The question of their integration into their respective...

An unprecedented number of refugees from Syria has sought refuge in both the Middle East as well as in Europe since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011. Refugees do not only bring patterns of behavior they have acquired over their childhood and adolescence with them but also the –...

Since at least the early nineteenth century, much of “political economy” had become occupied with “resource allocation”. It became occupied with understanding the relative merits of economic systems coordinated by decentralized processes (market-mediated exchange) or by centralized...