Across 800 regions of the World, this research shows that people are more religious when living in regions that are more frequently razed by natural disasters. This is in line with psychological theory stressing that religious people tend to cope with adverse life events by seeking comfort in...

We estimate structural models of guilt aversion to measure the population level of willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid feeling guilt by letting down another player. We compare estimates of WTP under the assumption that higher-order beliefs are in equilibrium (i.e. consistent with the choice...

We present a dynamic extension of the classic static model of Bertrand price competition that allows competing duopolists to undertake cost-reducing investments in an attempt to “leapfrog” their rival to attain low-cost leadership—at least temporarily. We show that leapfrogging occurs in...

It is well known that if X(t) is a nonstationary process and Y(t) is a linear function of X(t), then cointegration of Y(t) implies cointegration of X(t). We want to find an analogous result for common trends if X(t) is generated by a finite order VAR. We first show that Y(t) has an infinite...

We discuss the moment condition for the fractional functional central limit theorem (FCLT) for partial sums of x(t)=Δ^(-d)u(t), where d є (-1/2,1/2) is the fractional integration parameter and u(t) is weakly dependent. The classical condition is existence of qmax(2,(d+1/2)-¹) moments of the...

This paper contains an overview of some recent results on the statistical analysis of cofractional processes, see Johansen and Nielsen (2010b). We first give an brief summary of the analysis of cointegration in the vector autoregressive model and then show how this can be extended to fractional...

We provide a modeling framework to think about selective contracting in the health care sector. Two health care providers differ in quality and costs. When buying health insurance, consumers observe neither provider quality nor costs. We derive an equilibrium where health insurers signal...

We document that rules for leadership succession in ethnic societies that antedate the modern state predict contemporary political regimes; leadership selection by election in indigenous societies is associated with contemporary representative democracy. The basic association, however, is...

It is a well known fact that economic development and distance to the equator are positively correlated variables in the world today. It is perhaps less well known that as recently as 1500 C.E. it was the other way around. The present paper provides a theory of why the "latitude gradient"...

Many empirical questions about economic growth and development are left open due to the lack of long time series of reliable GDP estimates. The share of the labor force employed in agriculture can fill this gap. Agricultural employment shares are highly correlated with GDP per capita, less prone...