We explore the relation between historical population density in former colonies and modern income distribution. A theoretical model highlights the potentially opposing effects of native population density on incentives for colonists to conquer or settle in new territories. While an abundant...

In premodern societies, the residence of a newly wedded couple is often decided by custom. We formulate a theory of optimal postmarital residence rules based on contracting problems created by the nature of premarriage human capital investments. We argue that a fixed postmarital residence rule...

This paper studies the Viking age – the roughly 300 year period beginning in 800 AD – from the perspective of the economics of conflict. The Viking age is interesting because throughout the time period, the scale of conflict increased – small scale raiding behaviour eventually evolved into...

We consider the impact of merger on the equilibrium price and quality of products. Consumer demand for both products depends not only on own price and quality, but also on the price and quality of the other product. We consider both the case in which the merging firms produce gross complements,...

We examine whether advertising increases household debt by studying the initial expansion of television in the 1950’s. Exploiting the idiosyncratic spread of television across markets, we use microdata from the Survey of Consumer Finances to test whether households with early access to...

In pre-modern societies the residence of a newly-wedded couple is often decided by custom. We formulate a theory of optimal post-marital residence rules based on contracting problems created by the nature of pre-marriage human capital investments. We argue that a fixed post-marital residence...

Following the rapidly growing literature on the Neolithic revolution, I develop a model of mankind’s initial transition to agriculture in which population and technological sophistication are both endogenous variables. I assume that total factor productivity in both agriculture and hunting and...

In this paper I discuss the application of some simple models of contracting, bargaining, and human capital acquisition can be employed to understand cross cultural variation in the form and nature of institutions governing land inheritance, marital residence, and the gender division of labor.

We use a novel database on U. S. federal court decisions to measure the changes in the state of copyright protection in both statute and case law. We combine an index of copyright breadth derived from this database with a quarterly panel of firms in creative industries over the years 1986-1998....

A customary gender division of labor is one in which women and men are directed towards certain tasks and/or explicitly prohibited from performing others. We offer an explanation as to why the gender division of labor is so often enforced by custom, and why customary gender divisions of labor...