This paper provides evidence that the form of agriculture traditionally practiced--intensive plough agriculture versus shifting hoe agriculture--affected historic norms and preferences about fertility, and that these norms persist, affecting observed fertility around the world today.

We provide evidence that a tradition of village democracy is associated with the presence of national democracy today. We also show that a tradition of local democracy is associated with attitudes which are more supportive of democracy, with better quality institutions and with higher levels of...

To identify the effect of social capital on financial development, we exploit social capital differences within Italy. In high-social-capital areas, households are more likely to use checks, invest less in cash and more in stock, have higher access to institutional credit, and make less use of...

Economic theory suggests that uninsurable income risk and the expectation of future borrowing constraints can reduce the share of risky assets in a household's portfolio. If the utility function exhibits decreasing absolute risk aversion and decreasing prudence, an individual will reduce his...

The empirical evidence on rational inattention lags the theoretical developments: micro evidence on one of the most immediate consequences of observation costs--the infrequent observation of state variables--is not available in standard datasets. We contribute to filling the gap using new...