Does Asthma Impair Wealth Accumulation or Does Wealth Protect Against Asthma?*

Does Helicobacter pylori protect against asthma and allergy?

Does Helicobacter pylori protect against asthma and allergy?

The microbes that persistently colonise their vertebrate hosts are not accidental. Although highly numerous and diverse, there is specificity by site and substantial conservation between individuals. The genus Helicobacter includes spiral, highly motile, urease-positive, Gram-negative bacteria that colonise the stomach in many mammals. Each mammal has one or more dominant Helicobacter species a...

Dogaru et al. respond to "Does breastfeeding protect against 'asthma'?".

We thank Michael Kramer for his insightful comments (1) on our systematic review and meta-analysis on breastfeeding and childhood asthma (2). Following a concise summary of our findings, he points out the high heterogeneity of the results and addresses issues that might explain this, namely the phenotypic variability of asthma, lack of objective measurements, variable degrees of measurement bia...

Does Wealth Inequality Help Informal Insurance?

This paper investigates the effects of inequality in the presence of voluntary risk-sharing. In any period, an agent’s resources are composed of his share of a secure endowment (wealth, land) and a random component (labor income). To be sure, the distribution of wealth does not affect the Pareto optimal payoff vectors but, by changing the autarchic utilities, affects the set of these payoff vec...

Dynastic accumulation of wealth

Why do some dynasties maintain the fortune of their founders while others completely squander it in few generations? To address this question, we use a simple deterministic microfounded model based on two main elements: the “hunger for accumulation” and the “willingness to exert effort”. Contrary to models with capital market imperfections, our setting points to the crucial role of our two key ...