We study whether the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted risk preferences, comparing the results of experiments conducted before and during the outbreak. In each experiment, we elicit risk preferences from two sample groups: professional traders and undergraduate students. We find that, on average,...

While intermarriage with non-indigenous people has been identified as a significant predictor of the economic assimilation of Native people, the explanation for this effect is less understood. In this paper, I examine whether the economic assimilation from marrying a Native person with white...

Since the early days of the republic, state and local governments have periodically embarked on widespread, large-scale attempts to spur economic growth through targeted economic development subsidies. Interestingly, the constitutions of nearly every state in the union contain provisions that,...

This essay reviews Escape from Rome by Walter Scheidel. It examines the argument that Europe's persistent fragmentation following the collapse of the Rome empire is responsible for the origins of the modern world. First, I consider Scheidel's argument that the rise of Rome at the end of the...

This paper offers (yet another) reflection on the history and current status of economic history. No other sub-discipline of economics or history has tried so hard to be loved as economic history. That love is unrequited, because economic history's problem is existential: it is an inherently...

In this paper we review evidence about the development of the Chinese capital markets over a crucial period in world market history, and place that development in the context of world financial markets at the time. Despite fundamental differences between China today and China 100 years ago, it...

In this paper we review evidence about the development of the Chinese capital markets over a crucial period in world market history, and place that development in the context of world financial markets at the time. Despite fundamental differences between China today and China 100 years ago, it...

The Ottoman Empire has been predominantly viewed as the 'Sick Man of Europe.' The question arises, however, how this perceived inefficiency can be reconciled with the long existence and prosperity of the Empire. I argue that the Ottoman system could have been efficient subject to constraints....

The suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange for more than four months following the outbreak of World War I fostered a substitute market on New Street as a source of liquidity. The New Street market suffered from a lack of price transparency because its transactions were not...

This paper reviews the growing body of evidence on the relative economic standing of different regions of the world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In general, it does not find support for Eurocentric claims regarding Western Europe's early economic lead. The Eurocentric...