In the 'Knightian' theory of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs provide insurance to workers by paying fixed wages and bear all the risk of production. This paper endogenizes entrepreneurial risk by allowing for optimal insurance contracts as well as the occupational self-selection. Moral hazard...

There are few studies on occupational choices in Germany, and second-generation occupational choice and mobility is even less investigated. Such research is important because occupations determine success in the labour market. In a country like Germany occupations also reflect a general...

This Paper focuses on the entrepreneurial endeavors of immigrants and natives in Germany. We pay closer attention to Turks, since they are the largest immigrant group with a strong entrepreneurial tradition; self-employed Turks in Germany represent about 70% of all Turkish entrepreneurs in the...

We develop a theory of intergenerational transmission of preferences that rationalizes the choice between alternative parenting styles (as set out in Baumrind 1967). Parents maximize an objective function that combines Beckerian altruism and paternalism towards children. They can affect their...

We build an occupational-choice general-equilibrium model of an economy with the non-profit sector financed through private warm-glow donations. Lack of monitoring on the use of funds implies that an increase of funds of the non-profit sector (because of a higher income in the for-profit sector,...

We study the macroeconomic effects of rational asset bubbles in an overlapping-generations economy where asset trading requires specialized intermediaries and where agents freely choose between working in the production or in the financial sector. Frictions in the market for deposits create...

The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order whereby the landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values between a...

This Paper documents the major features of Jewish economic history in the first millennium to explain the distinctive occupational selection of the Jewish people into urban, skilled occupations. We show that many Jews entered urban occupations in the eighth-ninth centuries in the Muslim Empire...

From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring any Jewish father to educate his children. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this exogenous change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history....

We develop an economic theory of tolerance where styles of behaviour are invested with symbolic value. Value systems are endogenous and taught by parents to their children. In conjunction with actual behaviour, value systems determine the esteem enjoyed by individuals. Intolerant individuals...