Historians have frequently suggested that droughts helped facilitate the African slave trade. By introducing a previously unused dataset on 19th century rainfall levels in Africa, I provide the first empirical answer to this hypothesis. I show that negative rainfall shocks and long-run shifts in...

Historians have frequently suggested that droughts helped facilitate the African slave trade. By introducing a previously unused dataset on 19th century rainfall levels in Africa, I provide the first empirical answer to this hypothesis. I show that negative rainfall shocks and long-run shifts in...

I construct an index of political polarization using seven previously proposed measures. I estimate the relative propensity for polarization across demographic groups in a regression framework and examine the extent to which demographic change can explain recent trends in polarization. Assuming...

I build a dataset of over one million images used on the front page of websites around the 2016 election period. I then use machine-learning tools to detect the faces of politicians across the images and measure the nonverbal emotional content expressed by each politician. Combining this with...

Can the slave trade explain Africa's propensity for conflict? Using variation in slave exports driven by the interaction between foreign demand shocks and heterogeneity in trade costs, we show that the slave trade increased conflict propensities in pre-colonial Africa and that this effect has...

Historians have frequently suggested that droughts helped facilitate the African slave trade. By introducing a previously unused dataset on historical rainfall levels in Africa, I provide the first empirical answer to this hypothesis. I demonstrate how negative rainfall shocks and long-run...