We combine unsupervised machine-learning and econometric methods to examine cultural change in 16th- and 17th-century England. A machine-learning digest synthesizes the content of 57,863 texts comprising 83 million words into 110 topics. The topics include the expected, such as Natural...

We generate and analyze data pertinent to the role of caselaw in England's economic development during the Industrial Revolution. Applying topic modeling to a corpus of 67,455 reports on English court cases, we construct annual time series of caselaw developments between 1765 and 1865. We then...

We bring attention to a previously overlooked determinant of de jure-de facto constitutional gaps: a polity's transition to a nation-state. We argue that nation-statehood, predicated on the formation of a strong sense of national identity, lowers the government's incentive to violate...

Conventional wisdom suggests that when business regulation is excessive, deregulation should enhance efficiency. The liberalization of services markets in Croatia demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case, particularly when features of the reform process allow undue influence by those...

Conventional wisdom suggests that when business regulation is excessive, deregulation should enhance efficiency. The liberalization of services markets in Croatia demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case, particularly when features of the reform process allow undue influence by those...