This paper analyses the link between the VDAX as a proxy for European fi nancial uncertainty and the number of terror incidents in Western Europe. Considering data of the Global Terrorism Database, the number of terror incidents does – on average – not aff ect fi nancial uncertainty. In contrast, based on a behavioral model of terrorism motivated by Schmid and de Graaf (1982), lagged fi nancial...

Using data from the US commodity flow surveys, we show that the historical UnionConfederacy border lowers contemporaneous trade between US states by about 16 percent relative to trade flows within the former alliances. Amongst one million placebos, there is no other constellation of state grouping that would yield a larger border effect. The finding is robust over different econometric models, ...

This paper examines the importance of the inclusion of buy-in data in analyzing the risk of investment in works of art. Using the data set of French Impressionist paintings brought to auction from 1985 to 2001, we construct a theoretical lognormal distribution to include the value of works that are bought in-house, and use this to examine bias in the pre-sale estimates of auction experts. It tu...

When one analyses the influence of social identity on scholastic effort, ethnic identity largely contributes to determine it. In this paper, ethnic identity is meant as the attachment to one’s cultural heritage and the adaptation to host societies; this allows considering how conflicting demands and social pressure from parents, peers, ethnic community and host societies influence children’s ef...

Ethnic Identity and Immigrants’ Wages in Greece This study investigates the impact of ethnic identity on Albanian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Georgian, and Russian wages in Greece. Treating ethnic identity as a composite of language, cultural habits, ethnic-self identification, societal interaction, and future citizenship plans, the estimations suggest that assimilation and integration are positively...

This chapter deals with the economic and ethnic diversity caused by international labor migration, and their economic integration possibilities. It brings together three strands of literature dealing with the neoclassical economic assimilation, ethnic identities and attitudes towards immigrants and the natives, and provides an analysis in understanding their interactions. The issue of how immig...

In this essay we review the association between the importance of family ties in a society and a series of economic indicators. We then examine in details the importance of the family in influencing educational choices in Italy, a country with very strong family ties. The results indicate that family background is crucial in determining the choice of high school in Italy. It is the choice of hi...

This paper constructs a simple theoretical political economy model to analyze the dynamic interactions between redistribution, public good provision and cultural integration of minority groups. Cultural differentiation erodes the support for general public good provision and vertical redistribution, reducing in turn the attractiveness of adoption of the mainstream culture by the minority groups...

Modern societies rely on both formal and social mechanisms to enforce social norms of behavior. Formal enforcement mechanisms rely on monetary or other tangible incentives while social enforcement mechanisms rely on some form of social judgment involving informal sanctions. We experimentally investigate the extent to which social observability and the possibility of social judgment affect indiv...

Monitoring an individual's mobility with a modern smartphone can have a profound impact on rehabilitation in the community. The thesis objective was to develop and evaluate a third-generation Wearable Mobility Monitoring System (WMMS) that uses features from inertial measurement units to categorize activities and determine user changes-of-state in daily living environments. A custom suite of MA...