Working Papers
How Cultural Diversity Drives Innovation: Surnames and Patents in U.S. History, with Jonathan Schulz and Joseph Henrich. Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Political Economy.
This paper examines the impact of cultural diversity on innovation. Focusing on the historical U.S. (1850-1940), we develop a novel measure of cultural diversity based on surnames and combine this with patent-based measures of innovation. Leveraging quasi-random variation in counties' surname compositions---stemming from the interplay of historical immigration flows---we find that rising cultural diversity increased both the quantity and quality of innovation within counties and for individual inventors: e.g., a one standard deviation increase in a county's cultural diversity raised patenting rates by 107% and individual inventor productivity by 20%. Examining mechanisms, we provide evidence suggesting that greater surname diversity fosters faster innovation both by expanding the range of ideas, skills and perspectives available for recombination and by fostering the diverse social interactions that facilitate idea sharing. The results suggest that the free flow of information between diverse minds drives innovation and contributed to the rise of the U.S. as a global innovation leader.
Media: Forbes
The Political Economy of Propaganda: Evidence from U.S. Newspapers, with Sebastian Ottinger
This study examines whether racial outrage in the media can result from the incentives of elites who seek to divide society for political gain, focusing on the late 19th century Southern United States. At this time, the Democratic Party had strong political incentives to incite racial outrage, and local Democratic elites exercised considerable influence over newspapers, the only mass media at the time. Using high-frequency historical newspaper data and a triple-difference estimation strategy, we find that Democratic elites orchestrated a racist propaganda campaign to sway white voters. Supporting analyses suggest that the propaganda benefited the Democrats in the subsequent election.
On the Importance of African Traditional Religion for Economic Behavior, with Lewis D. Butinda, Aimable A. Lameke, Nathan Nunn, and Raul Sanchez de la Sierra.
This study reveals that African traditional religions, often overlooked in economic analysis, can wield considerable influence over business choices and profitability. Our findings suggest that when certain religious rituals are made accessible to beer sellers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who believe in their power, it significantly corrects their perceptions of theft risk, leading to improved business decisions and, ultimately, increased profits.
Do Disasters Affect the Tightness of Social Norms? new draft coming soon
I study the impact of exposure to large negative shocks on how strongly individuals pressure others to adhere to the local social norms. Combining data on the occurrences of conflicts, epidemics, and other natural disasters with large-scale survey data, I show that individuals surveyed in the weeks after a shock hits in their vicinity place more importance in norm adherence and exhibit a greater willingness to sanction norm deviations. Examining within-country variation in shocks experienced during early lifetime across cohorts, I find that the effect persists and is largest in countries with low state capacity. The results are consistent with a conceptual framework in which shocks raise the returns to social coordination, and therefore individuals respond by exerting more pressure on others to adhere to the local norms.
Work in Progress
Cultural Change: Evidence from Three Centuries of U.S. Local Newspapers
Innovation and the Medieval Church, with Slava Savitskiy, Joseph Henrich, and Jonathan Schulz. [Slides]
Markets Make Humans WEIRDer: Evidence from 1850-1920 United States, with Itzchak Tzachi Raz