Economic Uncertainty and Structural Reforms
Can economic uncertainty make it easier for politicians to implement painful but beneficial reforms? Alessandra Bonfiglioli and Gino Gancia find evidence that indeed this is the case.
How crop expropriation cultivated social hierarchy
Joram Mayshar, Omer Moav, Zvika Neeman and Luigi Pascali find that one consistent difference between farming societies that developed complex hierarchies and those that did not was whether those societies relied on cereal grains or roots and tubers.
Do lawyers’ career concerns affect litigation decisions?
Career concerns are particularly relevant in the legal profession since the variance in lawyers’ earnings is large. Moreover, differences in perceived talents are a substantial determinant of the abovementioned variance. Rosa Ferrer studies how career concerns influence effort levels, litigants’ strategic interactions, and the role of the difficulty of the case as a multiplier of the career concerns implicit incentive.
Urban Networks: Connecting Markets, People and Ideas
Are American-style megacities or European-style urban networks the best development path for urbanizing countries like China? Can Europe’s relatively smaller cities compete with the world’s megacities by improving the transportation and communication links between them? Edward Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto, and Yimei Zou develop a theory of the flow of ideas within and between cities and discuss the factors that may favor consolidation into a dominant megalopolis over the balanced growth of a network of smaller cities.
