We discuss a wide range of measures of social heterogeneity, both theoretically and empirically. In our framework, individuals who differ from each other either in terms of their identity traits or of their cultural values experience antagonism toward each other. Depending on the type of...

Culture shapes how policies are made and how people react to them. This chapter explores how culture and development policy affect each other. First, we provide evidence that cultural mismatch -- specifically a mismatch between project manager background and the location of project...

This paper analyzes 630,000 paintings from 1400 onward to uncover how visual art reflects its socioeconomic context. We develop a learning algorithm to predict nine basic emotions conveyed in each painting and isolate a context effect--the emotional signal shared across artworks created in the...

Lab-in-the-field experiments, in which lab experiments are conducted in more naturalistic settings, are increasingly being implemented in developing country contexts. In this chapter, we outline the conceptual and logistical challenges typically associated with lab-in-the-field experiments in...

Culture's influence on economic outcomes is no longer controversial among economists even if it remains largely ignored in many areas of economics. This paper tackles a different question: why does culture change? The underlying premise adopted here is that culture changes because incentives...

This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences. We distinguish conceptually between the direct cultural transmission of political ideology and the transmission of more primitive preferences and beliefs that influence preferences over policies,...

This paper examines the evolving relationship between religion and economic development in emerging and developing countries (EDCs). Building on large-scale survey data and recent scholarship, we document persistent and, in many regions, increasing levels of religiosity. First, we present global...

Culture - the set of socially transmitted values and beliefs held by individuals - has important implications for a wide variety of economic outcomes. Both the causes and consequences of culture have been the subject of work in Historical Political Economy. I first outline several theories on...

Under what conditions does intergroup contact lead to conflict? We provide a novel answer to this question by highlighting the role of reputation mechanisms in sustaining cooperation. Reputational concerns can deter defection in one-time interactions within a group, but the informational content...

We analyze whether second-generation immigrants have different political preferences relative to observationally identical children of citizens in the host countries. Using data on individual voting behavior in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017, we characterize each vote on a...