How does previous exposure to massive immigrant inflows affect concerns about current immigration and the integration of refugees? To answer this question, we investigate attitudes toward newcomers among natives and previous immigrants. In areas that in the 1990s received higher inflows of...

The goal of this paper is to provide a preliminary overview of empirical Capability Approach (CA) applications for high-income OECD countries. The survey aims at a basis of mutual exchange on relevant CA issues among researchers analyzing well-being in affluent countries. It focuses on CA...

The Great Depression is the canonical case of a widespread currency war, with more than 70 countries devaluing their currencies relative to gold between 1929 and 1936. What were the currency war's effects on trade flows? We use newly-compiled, highfrequency bilateral trade data and gravity...

What has driven trade booms and trade busts in the past and present? We derive a micro-founded measure of trade frictions from leading trade theories and use it to gauge the importance of bilateral trade costs in determining international trade flows. We construct a new balanced sample of...

This is Part 2 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically...

This is Part 1 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically...

This paper traces the 11,000 year evolution of infrastructure systems during major periods of innovation, expansion and diffusion. Throughout history, the key role of the State is self-evident. Private sector involvement has waxed and waned over millennia, although at times it has been pivotal...

What precisely were the causes and consequences of the trade wars in the 1930s? Were there perhaps deeper forces at work in reorienting global trade prior to the outbreak of World War II? And what lessons may this particular historical episode provide for the present day? To answer these...

Pricing greenhouse gases is widely understood as the most efficient approach for mitigating climate change, yet distributional effects hamper political acceptance. These distributional effects are especially important in transport, the fastest growing sector for greenhouse gas emissions. Using...

Iceberg transport costs are one of the main ingredients of modern trade and economic geography models: transport costs are modelled by assuming that a fraction of the goods shipped “melts in transit”. In this paper, we investigate whether the iceberg assumption applies to the costs of...