All advanced economies have undergone secular revolutions in which religious belief and institutions have been subordinated to secular forms of authority. There are, however, numerous examples of failed secular transitions. To understand these failures, we present a religious club model with...

Educational institutions not only build human capital; they also shape culture. We present a model of cultural dynamics produced by cultural transmission through the education system. Groups that are culturally marginalized are also economically disadvantaged and exhibit various forms of...

Affirmative action policies are widely employed in college admissions, hiring, and other decisions to reduce underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups. Existing policies predominantly treat each identity dimension (e.g., race, gender, caste) as independent. We find that generically such...

Intergroup inequality has been linked to differing norms of economic participation among groups (Akerlof & Kranton 2000). An outstanding question is where do these norms come from? We present a theory of endogenous identity-specific norms in which the larger a group's representation in an...