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Articles 1 - 24 of 24
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Cultural Evolution: A Review Of Theoretical Challenges, Ryan Nichols, Mathieu Charbonneau, Azita Chellappoo, Taylor Davis, Miriam Haidle, Erik O. Kimbrough, Henrike Moll, Richard Moore, Thom Scott-Phillips, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Jose Segovia-Martin
Cultural Evolution: A Review Of Theoretical Challenges, Ryan Nichols, Mathieu Charbonneau, Azita Chellappoo, Taylor Davis, Miriam Haidle, Erik O. Kimbrough, Henrike Moll, Richard Moore, Thom Scott-Phillips, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Jose Segovia-Martin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘social learning’, ‘cumulative culture’) in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize …
Martha C. Nussbaum, Justice For Animals: Our Collective Responsibility, Terence C. Burnham
Martha C. Nussbaum, Justice For Animals: Our Collective Responsibility, Terence C. Burnham
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Martha Nussbaum's Justice for Animals.
God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone
God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This paper uses a novel lab experiment to test claims about the origins and functions of religion. We modify the standard public goods game, adding a computer-based agent that adjusts earnings in ways that might depend on players' contributions. Our treatments employ three different descriptions of the adjustment process that loosely correspond to monotheistic, atheistic, and agnostic interpretations of the computer's role. The adjustments neither mask players' contributions nor magnify their impact. Yet players in all three adjustment treatments contribute much more than those who play the standard public goods game. Players' contributions and survey responses show that adjustments induce …
Coping With Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, And The Modern State. Jonathan Laurence (Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press, 2021). Pp. 606. $35.00 Paper. Isbn: 9780691172125, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A book review of Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State by Jonathan Lawrence.
The Cultural Transmission Of Trust Norms: Evidence From A Lab In The Field On A Natural Experiment, Elira Karaja, Jared Rubin
The Cultural Transmission Of Trust Norms: Evidence From A Lab In The Field On A Natural Experiment, Elira Karaja, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
We conduct trust games in three villages in a northeastern Romanian commune. From 1775–1919, these villages were arbitrarily assigned to opposite sides of the Austrian and Ottoman/Russian border despite being located seven kilometers apart. This plausibly exogenous border assignment affected local institutions and late-18th century migration in a manner that likely also affected trust. Conditional on trust norms being affected by these centuries-old historical circumstances, our experimental design tests the degree to which such norms are transmitted intergenerationally. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find that participants on the Austrian side that also have family roots in the village are indeed …
A Network Of Thrones: Kinship And Conflict In Europe, 1495–1918, Seth G. Benzell, Kevin Cooke
A Network Of Thrones: Kinship And Conflict In Europe, 1495–1918, Seth G. Benzell, Kevin Cooke
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
We construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths of rulers' mutual relatives. These deaths are associated with substantial increases in the frequency and duration of war. We provide evidence that these deaths affect conflict only through changing the kinship network. Over our period of interest, the percentage of European monarchs with kinship ties increased threefold. Together, these findings help explain the well-documented decrease in European war frequency.
Introduction To The Special Issue On The Economics Of Religion, Jared Rubin
Introduction To The Special Issue On The Economics Of Religion, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
"The economics and political science of religion have blossomed into full-fledged fields in the last decade and a half. What was once a field on the far outskirts of economics and political science now regularly publishes in its top journals (see Figure 1).1 By 1998, the field was large enough for Iannaccone (1998) to write a survey of the shape of the field. The field was very much at its infancy at that time, and most of the best work was done by sociologists and/or published in sociology journals. This has changed significantly in the 22 years since Iannaccone's …
Review Of The Promise And Peril Of Credit: What A Forgotten Legend About Jews And Finance Tells Us About The Making Of European Commercial Society, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society, by Francesca Trivellato, published by Princeton University Press.
Spanish California Missions: An Economic Success, Lynne Doti
Spanish California Missions: An Economic Success, Lynne Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Starting in 1769, the Spanish established missions in Alta California. A small band of soldiers, Franciscan priests and volunteers walked from Baja California to San Francisco Bay through semi-arid, scarcely populated land stopping occasionally to establish a location for a religious community. Usually two priests, a few soldiers and a few Indians from Baja California settled at the spot. Their only resources for starting an economy were themselves, a few animals and a nearby source of water. They attracted the local Indians to join the community and perform the work necessary to create a strong economy. After only a few …
Review Of Islam Instrumentalized: Religion And Politics In Historical Perspective, Jared Rubin
Review Of Islam Instrumentalized: Religion And Politics In Historical Perspective, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Jean-Philippe Platteau's Islam Instrumentalized: Religion and Politics in Historical Perspective.
Review Of Reading The Market: Genres Of Financial Capitalism In Gilded Age America, Lynne P. Doti
Review Of Reading The Market: Genres Of Financial Capitalism In Gilded Age America, Lynne P. Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Peter Knight's Reading the Market: Genres of Financial Capitalism in Gilded Age America.
Review Of Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Lynne P. Doti
Review Of Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Lynne P. Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Jared Rubin's Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not.
From Hard Money To Branch Banking California Banking In The Gold Rush Economy, Larry Schweikart, Lynne Pierson Doti
From Hard Money To Branch Banking California Banking In The Gold Rush Economy, Larry Schweikart, Lynne Pierson Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
In Gold Rush–era California, banking and the financial sector evolved in often distinctive ways because of the Gold Rush economy. More importantly, the abundance of gold on the West Coast provided an interesting test case for some of the critical economic arguments of the day, especially for those deriving from the descending—but still powerful—positions of the “hard money” Jacksonians.
Printing And Protestants: An Empirical Test Of The Role Of Printing In The Reformation, Jared Rubin
Printing And Protestants: An Empirical Test Of The Role Of Printing In The Reformation, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The causes of the Protestant Reformation have long been debated. This paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the Reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press. I test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the Reformation at the city level. An econometric analysis that instruments for omitted variable bias with a city's distance from Mainz, the birthplace of printing, suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were at minimum 29 percentage points more likely to be Protestant by 1600.
Political Legitimacy And Technology Adoption, Metin M. Coşgel, Thomas J. Miceli, Jared Rubin
Political Legitimacy And Technology Adoption, Metin M. Coşgel, Thomas J. Miceli, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A fundamental question of economic and technological history is why some civilizations adopted new and important technologies and others did not. In this paper, we analyze the effect that new technologies have on agents that legitimize rulers. We construct a simple political economy model which suggests that rulers may not accept a productivity-enhancing technology when it negatively affects an agent’s ability to provide the ruler legitimacy. However, when other sources of legitimacy emerge, the ruler will accept the technology as long as the new legitimizing source is not negatively affected. We use this insight to help explain the initial blocking …
The Political Economy Of Mass Printing: Legitimacy And Technological Change In The Ottoman Empire, Metin M. Coşgel, Thomas J. Miceli, Jared Rubin
The Political Economy Of Mass Printing: Legitimacy And Technological Change In The Ottoman Empire, Metin M. Coşgel, Thomas J. Miceli, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
New technologies have not always been greeted with full enthusiasm. Although the Ottomans were quick to adopt advancements in military technology, they waited almost three centuries to sanction printing in Ottoman Turkish (in Arabic characters). Printing spread relatively rapidly throughout Europe following the invention of the printing press in 1450 despite resistance by interest groups and temporary restrictions in some countries. We explain differential reaction to technology through a political economy approach centered on the legitimizing relationships between rulers and their agents (e.g., military, religious, or secular authorities). The Ottomans regulated the printing press heavily to prevent the loss it …
Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin
Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We …
Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin
Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.
Social Insurance, Commitment, And The Origin Of Law: Interest Bans In Early Christianity, Jared Rubin
Social Insurance, Commitment, And The Origin Of Law: Interest Bans In Early Christianity, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Despite the historical importance of ideology-based, economically inhibitive laws, we know little about the economic factors underlying their origin. This paper accounts for the historical emergence of one such law: the Christian ban on taking interest--a doctrine that shaped the evolution of numerous financial contracts and related organizational forms. A game-theoretic analysis and historical evidence suggest that the Church's commitment to providing social insurance for its poorest constituents encouraged risky borrowing, which the Church attempted to limit by banning interest. The analysis highlights the applicability of the rational choice framework to seemingly irrational actions and laws, the role of nonmonetary …
Review Of Frances Dinkelspiel's Towers Of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, Lynne Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A review of "Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California."
Human Nature: An Economic Perspective, Vernon L. Smith
Human Nature: An Economic Perspective, Vernon L. Smith
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
An economist writing on the topic of human nature is surely expected to talk about decision making by narrowly self-interested rational agents.
Nationwide Branching: Some Lessons From California, Lynne Doti
Nationwide Branching: Some Lessons From California, Lynne Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
California provides a case study of a large and diverse geographic area with few restrictions on branch banking. In spite of the lack of restrictions, branching occurred primarily in two periods, the 1920's and 1960's. Large banks took over smaller banks during these periods, but, particularly in the 1960's, new banks opened to fill the gap. Branching without limitation did not result in a few banks dominating the market.
Financing The Postwar Housing Boom In Phoenix And Los Angeles, 1945-1960, Lynne Doti, Larry Schweikart
Financing The Postwar Housing Boom In Phoenix And Los Angeles, 1945-1960, Lynne Doti, Larry Schweikart
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This article compares the real estate markets in Los Angeles, CA to Phoenix, AZ.
Banking In California: Some Evidence On Structure, 1878-1905, Lynne Doti
Banking In California: Some Evidence On Structure, 1878-1905, Lynne Doti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Doti’s thesis explains the contribution of state banks to nineteenth century financial history in the United States.