The Emergence of Hierarchies and States: Productivity vs. Appropriability, joint with Joram Mayshar, Zvika Neeman, and Luigi Pascali According to conventional theory, hierarchies and states were formed following the Neolithic Revolution because the increase in land productivity generated a food surplus. Regional differences in state hierarchies are therefore explained by...

The Sense of the State According to a growing literature in economics, mafia-type organizations are a response to weak states. In several contexts, however, these organizations continue to persist and thrive even when state capacity is strengthened. This suggests that the perception of a weak and remote state may be,...

Scientific Revolution: Institutions and the Intellectual Rise of the Western World This paper uses the union of the world’s largest library collections to document the rise of scientific output in the West. Results suggest that the West had pulled ahead of the Islamic world by the fourteenth century, casting doubt...

Housing Bubbles and Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Spain This paper combines different sources (tax records, national accounts, wealth surveys) and a new asset-specific accumulation decomposition in order to analyze the impact of the Spanish housing bubble on wealth inequality. Wealth concentration has been quite stable since the eighties, with shares...

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Looking for the bright side of the China Syndrome: Rising export opportunities and life satisfaction in China, joint with Matthieu Crozet and Sandra Poncet China’s increased export capacity in recent decades has disrupted developed country labour markets and the well-being of workers exposed to foreign competition. Our work attempts to...