Productivity, Rank, and Returns in Polygamy

Productivity, Rank, and Returns in Polygamy.

This study sheds light on the development of family structures in a polygamous context with a particular emphasis on wife order, and offers an explanation for the association between outcomes of children and the status of their mothers among wives based on observable maternal characteristics. In a simple framework, I propose that selection into rank among wives with respect to female productivi...

Predicting a Rank Measure for Stock Returns

Does Tokyo Matter ? Increasing Returns and Regional Productivity

One account of spatial concentration focuses on productivity advantages arising from market size. We investigate this for forty regions of Japan. Our results identify important effects of a region's own size, as well as backward linkages between producers and suppliers of inputs. Productivity links to a more general form of "market potential" or Marshall-Arrow-Romer externalities do not appear ...

Time Use and Productivity: The Wage Returns to Sleep

While economists have long been interested in effects of health and human capital on productivity, less attention has been paid to the influence of time use. We investigate the productivity effects of the single largest use of time—sleep. Because sleep influences performance on memory and focus intensive tasks, it plausibly affects economic outcomes. We identify the effect of sleep on wages by ...

The Mystery of Polygamy

The economic literature on marriage identifies a number of benefits of marriage and discusses mechanisms that cause societies to prefer certain marital structures such as polygyny or monogamy. In principle, however, these benefits and mechanisms might lead societies towards polyandry and even cenogamy. The rareness of polyandry and the absence of cenogamy, however, clearly indicate that importa...