This paper introduces a unifying theoretical framework to understand the relationship between different types of communications technology (CT) and the incidence of civil conflict. In our model, one-way CT allows the government to broadcast messages they use to (mis)inform dissidents about the...

In the early 2000s, the Colombian government aired messages during games of the national football team, urging FARC rebels to demobilize. We first study the strategy's effectiveness, leveraging game dates, kick-off times, and spatial-temporal variation in rain-induced signal strength in a...

Can religiosity sway a society's propensity for violence against outgroups? We first introduce two state-year-level religiosity measures for several pre-Enlightenment European states with the frequencies of (i) religious language in book publications and (ii) Christian names of newborns. To...

Is humanity's circle of moral concern expanding, as often claimed? I explore frequencies of morally universal language in 15m book publications in American English, British English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian from 1800-2000. In each language, morally universal terminology diminished...

There exists a persistent disagreement in the literature over the effect of business cycles on economic growth. This paper offers a solution to this disagreement, suggesting that volatility carries a positive direct effect, but also a negative indirect effect, operating through the insurance...

We estimate the relationship between international youth and professional tennis rankings. We find no difference between the predictiveness of rankings from age 14 & Under versus age 16 & Under competitions. The most persistent predictor of professional success is beating older top ranked...

This paper argues that UN military interventions are geographically biased. For every 1,000 kilometers of distance from the three Western permanent UNSC members (France, UK, US), the probability of a UN military intervention decreases by 4 percent. We are able to rule out several alternative...

This paper systematically analyzes media attention devoted to terrorist attacks worldwide between 1998 and 2012. Several aspects are related to predicting media attention. First, suicide missions receive significantly more coverage, which could explain their increased popularity among terrorist...

This paper analyzes the microeconomic sources of wage inequality in the United States from 1967-2012. Decomposing inequality into factors categorized by degree of personal responsibility, we find that education is able to explain more than twice as much of inequality today as 45 years ago....

This paper identifies matches on the male and female professional tennis tours in which one player faces a high payoff from being "on the bubble" of direct entry into one of the lucrative Grand Slam tournaments, while their opposition does not. Analyzing over 378,000 matches provides strong...