Not only the games.com fair in Cologne and the games convention fair in Leipzig have recently shown that the often ridiculed games industry (PC, console and mobile gaming) has long since matured into a serious economic sector on a par with the film industry. Since the days of TV games the gaming...

Anthropologists have long documented substantial and persistent differences across social groups in the preferences and taboos for particular foods. One natural question to ask is whether such food cultures matter in an economic sense. In particular, can culture constrain caloric intake and...

We exploit migration patterns from the UK to Australia, South Africa, and the US to investigate whether a person's decision to smoke is determined by culture. For each country, we use retrospective data to describe individual smoking trajectories over the life-course. For the UK, we use these...

During these times, the resilience of humankind is put to the test by the ravages of COVID-19. Besides the virus, endemic corruption becomes pandemic since some individuals seek unethical gains and peril others' lives, engaging in corrupt, fraudulent behaviors. The East European countries have...

The transfer of public resources to the private sector through public procurement procedures opens an unprecedented opportunity for corruption and bribery. Moreover, the complex structure of the health sector leaves the sector more vulnerable to corruption and bribery than other sectors. Along...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered...

This essay, originally presented as a talk at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis on April 30, 2023, as part of the Midwest LGBTQ+ Rights Conference and the Washington University Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series, takes up the new intersectional and anti-racist...

This chapter summarizes the results of 11 studies that were conducted on the relationship between health and attitude toward bribery. Additional summaries will be published in the second volume of this series, The Ethics of Bribery: Country Studies

We exploit migration patterns from the UK to Australia, South Africa, and the US to investigate whether a person's decision to smoke is determined by culture. For each country, we use retrospective data to describe individual smoking trajectories over the life-course. For the UK, we use these...

We study unique data from a dynamic natural experiment involving more than 7,000 American women to understand how a woman's propensity to perform an annual mammography changes over time after a co-worker is diagnosed with breast cancer. We find that in the year this event occurs the probability...