Many years ago, Emmanuel Todd argued that differences in family organization - specifically the rules of inheritance, the number of generations living under one roof, and endogamous marriage - are reflected in the organization of the state. He also argued that different family types lead to...

The size of the average American household has fallen dramatically -from six in 1850 to three in 2000. To explain this decline we model households as collections of roommates who share the costs of household public goods. If private goods are more income elastic than public goods, as we document...

The economics of labor supply, a basic building block of economic theory, cannot provide any substantive analytical predictions on the course of labor supply by an individual or a group. This is largely due to the absence, in the theory of income-leisure choice, of any consequential behavioral...

This paper models a game between an authority, seeking to implement its preferred morality, and a parental generation, seeking to socialize a younger generation into the their own morality. The authority chooses a coercion level for adhering to the non-state morality, whereupon the parental...

Living arrangements have changed enormously over the last two centuries. While the average American today lives in a household of only three people, in 1850 household size was twice that figure. Furthermore, both the number of children and the number of adults in a household have fallen...

Why, how, and under what conditions do moral beliefs persist despite institutional pressure for change? Why do the powerful often fail to promote the morality of their authority? This paper addresses these questions by presenting the role of crypto-morality in moral persistence. Crypto-morality...

Many years ago, Emmanuel Todd argued that differences in family organization – specifically the rules of inheritance, the number of generations living under one roof, and endogamous marriage – are reflected in the organization of the state. He also argued that different family types lead to...

Tipping is a multi-billion-dollar phenomenon that challenges the traditional assumption of selfish economic agents who have no feelings and do not care about social norms. This paper reviews the early history of tipping and offers an economic analysis of different aspects of tipping. Using the...

The size of the average American household has fallen dramatically -from six in 1850 to three in 2000. To explain this decline we model households as collections of roommates who share the costs of household public goods. If private goods are more income elastic than public goods, as we document...

Why, how, and under what conditions do moral beliefs persist despite institutional pressure for change? Why do the powerful often fail to promote the morality of their authority? This paper addresses these questions by presenting the role of crypto-morality in moral persistence. Crypto-morality...