This is a replication of Mayshar et al. (2022) (henceforth MMP).1 The article posits that the state (defined as societal hierarchy such as tax-levying elites) originated from cultivation of appropriable cereal grains, contrary to the conventional theory that the state originated from increased...

From 1961 to 2007, U.S. aggregate hours worked increased and the labor wedge—measured as the discrepancy between a representative household׳s marginal rate of substitution and the marginal product of labor—declined substantially. The labor wedge is negatively related to hours and is often...