I study a cheap talk model between a buyer and a seller with two goods for sale. There is two-sided (independent) private information with sequential, two-way communication. In the first stage, the buyer communicates her private preferences to the seller. In the second stage, the seller...

Over the last two decades there has been a growing debate on the supposedly negative relation between ethnic diversity, public goods production and social cohesion. Despite the amount of evidence, existing in-depth qualitative reviews conclude that the literature is inconclusive. Advancing upon...

The question whether ethnic diversity is associated with declining social cohesion has produced much controversy. We maintain that more attention must be paid to cognitive mechanisms to move the debate ahead. Using survey data from 938 localities in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, we...

In this paper, we explore the long-run effects of cultural and imperial legacies in the Baltic region. Drawing evidence from the 1897 population census in the Russian Empire, we find that localities with a higher share of German historical population are inclined to be more developed in...

We present a simple model to illustrate how birthplace diversity may affect team performance. The model assumes that birthplace diversity increases the stock of available knowledge due to skill complementarities and decreases effciency due to communication barriers. The consequence of these two...

Using data across European corporate boards, we investigate the effects of quota-induced female representation on firm value and operations, under minimal identification assumptions. We consider sharp increases in the share of women on boards that arise due to rounding whenever percentage-based...