The impact of occult belief on legitimacy of the state and on aid for democratization in Africa: Among politicians and development experts in Africa alike there is a growing awareness of the never decreasing importance of the belief in magic and witchcraft on political decision making since...

Among leftists, predicting the end of capitalism is a favorite parlor game. For example, as a graduate student in the 2010s, I remember discovering the 1976 edition of Marx’s Capital and being struck by the introduction. Written by the Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel, the foreword concluded that...

Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that an increase in women's bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance law change, the Hindu...

We investigate the legacy of the former Papal States on modern female condition by comparing Italian municipalities located in a narrow band across the border between the former Papal States and the former Grand Duchy of Tuscany. While in the Papal States gender inequality was particularly...

This article exploits the creation of a paradigmatic multi-ethnic state, Yugoslavia, to examine if, to what extent, and why the effect of ethnic ties on trade costs changes over time. We compile and examine a panel of over 550,000 inter-urban price gaps spanning the area of Yugoslavia in the...

We examine the gender legacy of past institutions by comparing Italian municipalities located in a narrow band across the borders between the former Papal States on the one hand, and the former Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Modena on the other. Our results show that a century after the...

How does conflict exposure affect trust? We hypothesize that direct (first-hand) experience with conflict induces parochialism: trust towards out-groups worsens, but trust towards in-groups, owing to positive experiences of kin solidarity, may improve. Indirect exposure to conflict through...

Non-unitary household models suggest that enhancing women's bargaining power can influence child health, a crucial determinant of human capital and economic standing throughout adulthood. We examine the effects of a policy shift, the Hindu Succession Act Amendment (HSAA), which granted...

This paper studies the aggregate distribution of declared opin- ions and behavior when heterogeneous individuals make the trade- off between being true to their private opinions and conforming to an endogenous social norm. The model sheds light on how various punishment regimes induce conformity...

There is a long tradition in psychology, the social sciences and, more recently though, economics to hypothesize that religion enhances prosocial behavior. Evidence from both survey and experimental data however yield mixed results and there is barely any evidence for Germany. This study adds to...