Many argue that elements of a society's norms, culture, or social capital are central to under-standing its development. However, these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models. Here we explore a possible role for "trustworthiness" as corresponding to social capital. Individuals...

This paper analyzes the interactions between growth and the contracting environment in production. With incompleteness in contracting, a firm's capacity to commit to its workers will depend on institutional frictions such as hiring and firing costs. This interaction of contracting structure and...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of unemployment benefit sanctions in reducing unem-ployment duration. Swiss data on benefit sanctions allow us to separate the effect of a warning that a person is not complying with eligibility requirements from the effect of the actual enforce-ment of...