The slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration experiences in history. In this paper, I illustrate their long-term consequences on contemporaneous socio-economic outcomes, drawing from my own previous work on the topic and from an extensive review of the...

The slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration experiences in history. In this paper, I illustrate their long-term consequences on contemporaneous socio-economic outcomes, drawing from my own previous work on the topic and from an extensive review of the...

The slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration experiences in history. In this paper I illustrate their long-term consequences. I first consider the influence of the slave trade on the "sending" countries in Africa, with attention to their economic,...

In the absence of reliable and exhaustive income data, Proxy Means Tests (PMTs) are frequently employed as a cost-effective way to identify income-poor beneficiaries of targeted anti-poverty programs. However, their usefulness depends on whether proxies accurately identify the income poor. Based...

This paper finds that per capita municipal spending on public services is strongly and non-linearly correlated to urban population density. Optimal expenditure levels for municipal services are achieved when densities are close to 9,000 residents per square kilometer. In this study of...

Between 2000 and 2013, Latin America has considerably reduced poverty (from 46.3% to 29.7% of the population). In this paper, we use synthetic panels to show that, despite progress, the region remains characterized by substantial vulnerability that also affects the rising middle-class. More...

In the absence of reliable and exhaustive income data, Proxy Means Tests (PMTs) are frequently employed as a cost-effective way to identify income-poor beneficiaries of targeted anti-poverty programs. However, their usefulness depends on whether proxies accurately identify the income poor. Based...

The key role played by indentured servants in the settlement and development of the English colonies in the West Indies and the North American mainland in the first century of English colonisation has been overshadowed by interest in the much larger later trade in African slaves. 'There is Great...

In this paper I study the causal relationship between fertility and female labor supply using census data from 14 Latin American countries and the U.S. over the span of three decades (1980, 1990 and 2000). Parental preferences for a gender-balanced family (mixed-sex children) is exploited as a...

This book is a sweeping global and intellectual history that radically recasts our understanding of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, the most famous book on population ever written or ever likely to be. Malthus's Essay is also persistently misunderstood. First published...

Prologue : before the asiento -- 1. Britain hopes for the "riches of America," 1713-1716 -- 2. The stuttering success of the early trade, 1717-1728 -- 3. "Unjust depredations" and growing tensions, 1729-1738 -- 4. The end of the British asiento, 1739-1748 -- Epilogue : Beyond the asiento

The Americas in the rise of industrial capitalism / John Tutino -- The Cádiz liberal revolution and Spanish American independence / Roberto Breña -- Union, capitalism, and slavery in the "rising empire" of the United States / Adam Rothman -- From slave colony to Black nation : Haiti's...

"Since the 1980s, scholars have made the case for examining nineteenth-century culture--particularly literary output--through the lens of economics. In Culture and Money in the Nineteenth Century: Abstracting Economics, two luminaries in the field of Victorian studies, Daniel Bivona and Marlene...

Violence has a striking gender pattern. Men are more likely to be attacked by a stranger, while women experience violence mostly from their partners. This paper estimates the costs of violence against women in terms of intangible outcomes, such as women’s reproductive health, labor supply, and...

"The book explores how the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations in 2005 was rooted in a "crisis of authority" with respect to the leadership of the United States in the Americas. This "crisis of authority" was prompted by growing opposition in the Americas to the...

Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium. The paper constructs a data set incorporating measures of pre-colonial population density, new measures of present regional per capita...