This paper uses an own built dataset on the history of universities in Italy during 1861-2010 to estimate neighbourhood effects in the local supply of higher education, and incorporate them in a welfare analysis. We implement an instrumental variables approach that exploits initial conditions in...

Has the global financial crisis of 2007ff had a visible impact on the economics profession? To answer this question we employ a bibliometric approach and compare the content and orientation of economic literature before and after the crisis with reference to two different samples: A large-scale...

We study the historical origins of cross-country differences in the male-to-female sex ratio. Our analysis focuses on the use of the plough in traditional agriculture. In societies that did not use the plough, women tended to participate in agriculture as actively as men. By contrast, in...

We construct a database, with global coverage, that provides measures of the cultural and environmental characteristics of the pre-industrial ancestors of the world's current populations. In this paper, we describe the construction of the database, including the underlying data, the procedure to...

In seiner jüngeren Geschichte war Deutschland mit vielen tiefgreifenden ökonomischen Krisen konfrontiert. Diese wirkten sich vollkommen unterschiedlich auf den Wohnimmobilienmarkt aus. Einige Krisen machten sich auf nationaler, andere hingegen lediglich auf regionaler Ebene bemerkbar. Manche...

Der vorliegende Artikel führt die wirtschaftlichen Erfolge Sachsens nach der Vereinigung im Wesentlichen auf zwei Ursachen zurück: Zum einen auf die lange historische Tradition als bedeutsamer Industriestandort, die nicht zuletzt auch Denken und Einstellungen der Menschen in Sachsen auf lange...

Ökonomen und Politiker gehen heute nicht mehr von einer schnellen Angleichung der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland aus. In der Tat zeigen viele aktuelle Studien, dass regionalökonomische Unterschiede sehr persistent, also kaum veränderbar sind. Dieser...

This paper puts sub-Saharan Africa's economic development into perspective. While much did not go as hoped for at independence, much of the region has been on a more promising development trajectory since the mid-1990s, as we illustrate using growth, poverty, and human development indicators. We...

In the known history of mankind households dominated the economy. Both food production and industrial activities were carried out mainly in households, first of all by female work. In the early industrial development industrial activities and services have been separated from households in the...

The historiographical and socio-economic topic of the 1918-1921 agrarian reform, marked by a considerable degree of difficulty due to a multitude of objective, quantitative as well as qualitative factors, represents a point of reference in the research endeavours focused on the social and...