Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

One of the most robust empirical regularities in the political economy of trade is the persistence of protection. This paper explains persistent protection in terms of the interaction between industry adjustment, lobbying, and the political response. Faced with a trade shock, owners of...

We develop a two-period overlapping generations model in which both the structure of the family and the decision to commit crime are endogenous and the dynamics of moral norms of good conduct (honesty trait) is transmitted intergenerationally by families and peers. Having a father at home might...

This paper studies the interaction between labor market integration, the evolution of "work values" and entrepreneurial capital inside minority communities. A simple model of labor market segmentation with ethnic capital and endogenous transmission of cultural values inside the minority group is...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the intra-firm vs arms' length sourcing mode of imported inputs. We build a unique French dataset of 1,141,393 import transactions at the firm, country and product levels in the year 1999 that allow us to distinguish the different sourcing modes. We study...

How well does the theory of the firm explain the choice between intrafirm and arms' length trade? This paper uses firm-level import data from France to look into this question. We find support for three key predictions of property-rights theories of the multinational firm. Intrafirm imports are...