The election of Pope Francis reanimated the intellectual debate about capitalism and socialism in Catholic Church. This paper starts from this discus­ sion order to analyze economic thinking Austrian School relation Christian anthropology. It defends considering fundamental principles a free society institutional poliarchy. Following Hayek refutes critics toward traditional morality. Finally, i...

Understanding the Development of Fundamentalism We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects. Leaders work to enhance their followers’ observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable conditions, rivalry among fundamentalists makes them more ex...

We construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths rulers’ mutual relatives. These are associated with substantial increases frequency duration war. provide evidence that these affect conflict only through changing network. Ove...

In this paper we provide textual evidence on the sophistication of medieval deterrence strategies. Drawing on one of the great opera librettos based on medieval sources, Wagner’s Tannhäuser, we shall illustrate the use of optimal randomization strategies that can be derived by applying notions of dominance or trembling-hand perfection. Particular attention is paid to the employed randomization ...

This paper attempts to explain several empirical findings regarding religion. The main one is between religion and the fear of death. Some empirical evidence indicates moderately religious individuals fear death more than either atheists or extremely religious individuals. The model also explains the positive relationship often found between religious activity (e.g. church attendance) and age. ...

We investigate how the salience of an ethnic minority affects majority group’s voting behavior. use increased Muslim communities during Ramadan as a natural experiment. Exploiting exogenous variation in distance election dates to over 1980–2013 period Germany, our findings reveal polarization. Vote shares for both right- and left-wing extremist parties increase municipalities with mosques when ...