There’s a new paper by Gethin, Martínez-Toledano, and Piketty in the QJE that’s worth discussing, entitled “Brahmin Left versus Merchant right: Changing Political Cleavages in

Common wisdom dictates that it is easier for governments to provide new social programs than to pare back existing ones. This wisdom rests on decades

Prohibition represents one of the most politically charged, innovative, and ultimately failed policy experiments in the history of the United States. From 1920 to 1933,

I’ve recently taken on a project that has required me to revisit some earlier work on the Russian rural commune.  (That’s actually one of the

A large literature examines the institutional legacies of European colonialism. A common claim in these works is that a variety of contemporary institutional, political, and

A lot of great historical data comes from old maps. In my first assignment for my undergraduates, I have students go and find a cool map and ask a question with it. Here’s some of what they found and asked.