Many scholars have argued that once "basic needs" have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple...

European Enlightenment thinkers were right in stressing the political dimension of inequality, rather than referring to "natural differences" as some others did after them in the 19th or 20th centuries. Drawing from recent theoretical and empirical contributions in social sciences and in...

We explore education's role in improving the allocation of labor between China's agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and measure the portion of China's recent growth attributable to this channel. Using detailed micro-level data and an empirical model that allows for the endogenous selection...

Many scholars have argued that once "basic needs" have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple...

This study examines the spatial distribution of Muslim societies shedding light on its geographic origins. The empirical analysis conducted across countries, virtual countries, and ethnicities establishes that geographic inequality and proximity to pre-Islamic trade routes are fundamental...

We present the first attempt to construct a long-run historical measure of subjective wellbeing using language corpora derived from millions of digitized books. While existing measures of subjective wellbeing go back to at most the 1970s, we can go back at least 200 years further using our...

Since the Middle Ages the Jews have been engaged primarily in urban, skilled occupations, such as crafts, trade, finance, and medicine. This distinctive occupational selection occurred between the seventh and the ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire and then it spread to other locations. We...

It is our natural inclination to find stable patterns and meaning in the chaotic world around us. This assists in our efforts to understand the past and forecast the future. The starting point of this essay is the phrase "dismal science" which is an often used 'epitheton ornans' of economics....

The human costs of famines outlast the famines themselves. An increasing body of research points to their adverse long-run consequences for those born or in utero during them. This paper offers an introduction to the burgeoning literature on fetal origins and famine through a review of research...

I examine how the historical legacies of inter-ethnic complementarity and competition influence contemporary electoral competition and its effects on patterns of ethnic violence. Using local comparisons within Gujarat, a single Indian state known for its non-violent local traditions yet also for...