Does the wish to convince others lead people to persuade themselves about the moral and factual superiority of their position? We investigate this question in the context of two international debating competitions, where persuasion goals (pro or contra a motion) are randomly assigned to debaters...

We investigate how consumers respond to uncertainty about CO2 emission size. In an incentivized online experiment, participants can acquire a valuable good that emits an unknown amount of CO2. We find that beliefs about emission size are strongly predictive of purchases, even exceeding the...

Does the wish to convince others lead people to persuade themselves about the moral and factual superiority of their position? We investigate this question in the context of two international debating competitions, where persuasion goals (pro or contra a motion) are randomly assigned to debaters...

Laboratory evidence shows that when people have to argue for a given position, they persuade themselves about the position’s factual and moral superiority. Such self-persuasion limits the potential of communication to resolve conflict and reduce polarization. We test for this phenomenon in a...

We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using this matrix, we analyze how post-1500 migration has influenced the level of GDP per capita and within-country income inequality...

It has often been observed that the emergence of states in a region is typically preceded by an earlier transition to agricultural production. Using new data on the date of first state emergence within contemporary countries, we present a global scale analysis of the chronological relationship...