In this episode we chat with Luigi Pascali about his paper​ “The Wind of Change: Maritime Technology, Trade, and Economic Development”. Luigi finds that the introduction of the steamship in the shipping industry produced an asymmetric change in trade distances among countries. Before this invention, trade routes depended on wind patterns. The steamship reduced shipping…

In this episode we chat with Melanie Xue about her paper​ “Folklore”. Melanie and her co-author, Stelios Michalopoulos, focus their research on Folklore, interpreted as the collection of traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community passed through the generations by word of mouth. They find that societies with tales portraying men as dominant and…

In this episode we chat with Andrea about his paper​ “The Ant and the Grasshopper: Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture”. Andrea finds that the invention and adoption of agriculture were both a response to a large increase in climatic seasonality. In the most affected regions, hunter-gatherers abandoned their traditional nomadism in order to store…

In this episode we chat with Jeanet Bentzen about her paper​ “Pre-reformation roots of the protestant ethic”. Jeanet uses an earlier example, of the Cistercian Catholic Order, to show that religious values did influence productivity and economic performance in England and across Europe. The effect of this historic influence has persisted to today. Paper link:…

In this episode we ask Mara Squicciarini about her paper​ “Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-century France”, published in the American Economic Review in 2020. In her study, Mara finds that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw…