We examine Fogel's influential hypothesis that new transportation technologies may be dispensable if pre-existing technologies are viable or can simply be improved. Exploiting the construction of colonial railroads in Nigeria, we find that the railway has large long-lasting impacts on individual...

Exploring heterogeneity in the impact of a technology is a first step towards understanding conditions under which this technology is conducive to economic development. This article shows that colonial railroads in Nigeria have large long-lasting impacts on individual and local development in...

Exploring heterogeneity in the impact of a technology is a first step towards understanding conditions under which this technology is conducive to economic development. This article shows that colonial railroads in Nigeria have large long-lasting impacts on individual and local development in...

This paper shows that historical missionary activity has had a persistent effect on schooling outcomes, and contributed to a reversal of fortunes wherein historically richer ethnic groups are poorer today. Combining contemporary individual-level data with a newly constructed dataset on mission...

This paper contributes to the debate on the effect of European contact on African societies by comparing the long-run economic impacts of the transatlantic slave trade and historical missionary activity. Recognizing that early missionary activity in Africa was unintentionally aided by the...

We study political influence in institutions where members choose from among several options their levels of support to a collective goal, these individual choices determining the degree to which the goal is reached. Influence is assessed by newly defined binary relations, each of which compares...

Sex differences in early age mortality have been explained in prior literature by differences in biological make-up and gender discrimination in the allocation of household resources. Studies estimating the effects of these factors have generally assumed that offspring sex ratio is random, which...

The right to hold dual citizenship is an important political institution that is being adopted by an increasing number of countries. We argue that this institution can generate important social and economic benefits beyond its political dimension. Dual citizenship recognition by a country allows...

This paper shows that differences in fertility behavior between African countries can be traced back to colonial institutions. Exploiting the arbitrary division of ancestral ethnic homelands and the resulting discontinuity in institutions across the British-French colonial borders, we find that...

We offer a policy basis for interpreting, justifying, and designing (3,3)-political rules, a large class of collective rules analogous to those governing the selection of papers in peer-reviewed journals, where each referee chooses to accept, reject, or invite a resubmission of a paper, and an...