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Working Papers
Working Papers
The Urban Mortality Transition and the Transformation of the American City: 1900-1930
Slides, draft coming soon
Between 1900 and 1930, the mortality rates in US cities fell dramatically. Part of this decline was caused by investments in public health infrastructures, such as the opening of a water filtration plant, which reduced overall mortality by 5%. In this paper, I study the economic consequences of improvements in urban health. I combine data on mortality rates with data on wages and employment from the Census of Manufacturing. I instrument for the mortality in a city using the mortality in cities lying upstream of the same river. First, I find that mortality reduces the population’s growth rate. Second, I find that high-skill workers are more responsive than low-skill workers to urban mortality rates; high-skill wages are positively affected by high mortality rates, while I cannot reject a zero effect of mortality on low-skill wages. Cities with high mortality rates have a smaller ratio of high- to low-skill workers and a higher ratio of high- to low-skill wages. I complement the reduced-form evidence with a Rosen-Roback model which allows me to compute the amenity value by skill group for each city across time. I find that mortality has a negative impact on the amenity value of a city only for high-skill workers. Finally, I use the model to estimate the returns to the opening of a filtration plant.
The Impact of Religious Persecution on Scientific Progress: The Case of the Spanish Inquisition
This study investigates the influence of the Spanish Inquisition on suppressing scientific progress during the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain. By analyzing data on Inquisition trials, the research reveals that locations with more intense Inquisition activity experienced a significant decline in the production of local scientists. The Inquisition played a detrimental role in hampering scientific development, particularly in areas where scientific activity had been growing previously. Notably, this negative effect persisted for at least 150 years after the Inquisition’s establishment. The decline in scientific production was specific to science and was not the consequence of a general economic downturn, and no significant impact was observed on the production of creatives involved in liberal arts. These results contribute to the understanding of the interplay between religious institutions, intellectual progress, and scientific advancement
during this crucial historical period.
Self-Selection of International Migrants across Multiple Locations within Destination Country
Draft upon request
Published Papers
Published Papers
The Beauty of Uncertainty: The Rise of Insurance Contracts and Markets in Medieval Europe - Journal of the European Economic Association, December 2023
with Maristella Botticini and Massimo Marinacci
Teaching slides, Replication Package
This paper addresses the question of why modern insurance was first invented in medieval Europe, and neither earlier nor elsewhere. Drawing from insights from the literature on uncertainty aversion, we show that medieval merchants had to bear more frequently natural risks and new human risks with unknown probabilities. Increased demand for protection in medieval seaborne trade met the supply of protection by a small group of wealthy merchants with a broad information network. Next, we digitized more than 7,000 insurance contracts redacted by notaries housed in the several Italian and Spanish archives and we study the characteristics of insurance contracts and markets from 1340 to 1500. The empirical analysis delivers two main findings. First, risks related to human activities (e.g., attacks by corsairs) had a relatively greater impact on insurance premia compared to natural risks (proxied by seasonal risks). Second, distance mattered but the route had a greater impact on insurance premia. Specific routes (e.g., in the Tyrrhenian and the western Mediterranean) were more plagued by human risks, which were harder to avoid for the majority of merchants who did not have a broad information network compared to the few wealthy merchants, who became the key players in selling insurance in the early stages of the development of insurance markets.
Maritime insurance network
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