This research explores the historical roots and persistent effects of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. Exploiting a novel ethnic-level dataset, which combines geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that population...

This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that intra-ethnic diversity had a positive effect on the division of labor across ethnicities in the pre-modern era. Exploiting a variety of...

This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it shows that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity...

This paper argues that openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas has a first-order impact on creative innovations-innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between incremental and radical innovation,...

This paper argues that openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas has a first-order impact on creative innovations — innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between incremental and radical...

This paper argues that openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas has a first-order impact on creative innovations - innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between incremental and radical innovation,...

Why are certain movies more successful in some markets than others? Are the entertainment products we consume reflective of our core values and beliefs? These questions drive our investigation into the relationship between a society's oral tradition and the financial success of films. We combine...

This research explores the origins of observed differences in time preference across countries and regions. Exploiting a natural experiment associated with the expansion of suitable crops for cultivation in the course of the Columbian Exchange, the research establishes that pre-industrial...

Leveraging county-level exogenous variation in the agricultural origins of time preferences, identified by Galor and Ozak (2016), we measure the causal effects of long-term orientation traits on mobility behavior and COVID-19 infection rates from 22 January 2020 to 30 November 2020 in the United...

This paper presents a new global dataset on contemporary witchcraft beliefs and investigates their correlates. Witchcraft beliefs cut across socio-demographic groups but are less widespread among the more educated and economically secure. Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft...