We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects. Leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable...

Governments do not have perfect information regarding the priorities and the needs of different groups in the economy. This lack of knowledge opens the door for different groups to lobby the government in order to receive the government’s support. We set up a model of hierarchical contests and...

This paper examines whether a greater concentration of foreigners increases the likelihood of unemployment in local labor markets among citizens of the European Community. It provides the results of probit equations estimating the likelihood of employment in Europe as a function of a set of...

Hierarchical firms are enterprises with rigid internal job ladders. We examine the state enterprise as the prototypical hierarchical firm. In the state enterprise, promotion of employees through the internal hierarchy is determined by the workers’ allocation of time between rent seeking and...

his paper examines an important anomaly in the internal migration history of the former Soviet Union (FSU). While many cities were closed in the sense of explicitly limiting growth of city population from migration, it was difficult to assess the effectiveness of these controls. We analyze a...

We examine how the source of foreign aid affects the composition of the recipient government's spending. Does the source of aid -- bilateral or miltilateral -- influence ricipient policy-makers' choice between development and nondevelopment expenditure? We depart from previous literature by...

We examine who benefits when there is a strong leader in place, and those who benefit when a situation lacks a proper leader. There are fractious terrorist groups who seek to serve the same people in common cause against a common enemy. The groups compete for rents obtained from the public by...

The speed at which immigrants assimilate is the subject of debate. Human capital formation plays a major role in this discussion. This paper compares the educational attainment of second generation immigrants to those of natives in the same age cohort. Evidence using a large German data set...

This paper examines the differential effects of mother's schooling and father's schooling on the acquisition of schooling by their offspring. It does this in a "cross-cultural" context by comparing results across three countries: Germany, Hungary and the Former Soviet Union. It looks within...

This paper analyses Russian city growth during the command and transition eras. Our main focus is on understanding the extent to which market forces are replacing command forces, and the resulting changes in Russian city growth patterns. We examine net migration rates for a sample of 171 medium...