In the beginning of the 1890s, counties located in the Cotton Belt of the American South were hit by an agricultural plague, the boll weevil, that adversely affected cotton production and hence the demand for labor. We use variation in the incidence of the boll weevil multiplied with countiesÕ...

In the beginning of the 1890s, counties located in the Cotton Belt of the American South were hit by an agricultural plague, the boll weevil, that adversely affected cotton production and hence the demand for labor. We use variation in the incidence of the boll weevil multiplied with counties’...

There is an ongoing debate on whether the recent surge in unemployment in the US is due to cyclical or structural factors. The distinction is important because the policies required to reduce each type of unemployment are very dierent. We use a novel approach to empirically quantify the extent...

We investigate unemployment due to mismatch in the US over the past three decades. We propose an accounting framework that allows us to estimate the overall amount of mismatch unemployment as well as the contribution of the frictions that caused the mismatch. Mismatch is quantitatively important...

We present a very simple stochastic traffic cellular automaton (CA) model to reproduce synchronized traffic. This model aims to be nearly as simple as the well-known Nagel–Schreckenberg model, but to overcome to shortcomings of the latter: The Nagel–Schreckenberg model (NaSch) and its...

Structural unemployment is due to mismatch between available jobs and workers. We formalize this concept in a simple model of a segmented labor market with search frictions within segments. Worker mobility, job mobility and wage bargaining costs across segments generate structural unemployment....

Structural unemployment is due to mismatch between available jobs and workers. We formalize this concept in a simple model of a segmented labor market with search frictions within segments. Worker mobility, job mobility and wage bargaining costs across segments generate structural unemployment....

We examine how the introduction of smallpox vaccination affected early-life mortality and fertility in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century. We demonstrate that parishes in counties with higher levels of smallpox mortality prior to the introduction of vaccination experienced a...

We examine the effect of genetic diversity on economic development in the United States. Our estimation strategy exploits that immigrants from different countries of origin differed in their genetic diversity and that these immigrants settled in different regions. Based on a sample of over 2250...

Building on the idea that religious communities provide mutual insurance against some idiosyncratic risks, we argue that religious membership is more valuable in societies exposed to greater common risk. In our empirical analysis we exploit rainfall risk as a source of common economic risk in...