This paper estimates the effect of individual responsibility on economic development using an instrument derived from rainfall data. I argue that a taste for collective responsibility was adaptive in preindustrial societies that were exposed to high levels of agricultural risk, and that these...

After a decade of research, the effect of inequality on long-run economic growth remains unresolved, in part because researchers have treated omitted variable bias as an estimation problem rather than a deeper question of causality. In this article we argue that the key omitted variable is the...

This paper estimates the effect of individual responsibility on economic development using an instrument derived from rainfall data. I argue that a taste for collective responsibility was adaptive in preindustrial societies that were exposed to high levels of agricultural risk, and that these...

What will happen to gender equality as the world develops? While modernization theory stresses the emergence of increasingly cosmopolitan gender values, work on the cultural roots of gender roles finds that measures of historical patriarchy exert a persistent influence on contemporary attitudes...

Theories of growth and international trade are reviewed critically from the perspective of understanding persistent inter-country and inter-regional income inequality. Three separate literatures are considered for the insights they offer about international disparity: Classical political...