We experimentally demonstrate a causal link between recordkeeping and reciprocal exchange. Recordkeeping improves memory of past interactions in a complex exchange environment, which promotes reputation formation and decision coordination. Economies with recordkeeping exhibit a beneficially altered economic history where the risks of exchanging with strangers are substantially lessened. Our fin...

What is urban economics?1 I will refrain from torturing myself with this issue. Any definition will be too wide for some and too narrow for others. My definition will be simple, but appropriate for my interests and background: urban economics is scholarly writing that has specifically urban content and contains specifically economic analysis. Everyone will notice that my definition leaves room ...

Bounded rational behaviour is commonly observed in experimental games and in real life situations. Neuroeconomics can help to understand the mental processing underlying bounded rationality and out-of-equilibrium behaviour. Here we report results from a recent study on the neural basis of limited steps of reasoning in a competitive setting – the beauty contest game. We describe how a cognitive ...

This paper studies global stability of spatial configurations in a dynamic two-region model with quadratic adjustment costs where rational migrants make migration decisions so as to maximize their discounted future utilities. A global analysis is conducted to show that, except for knife–edge cases with symmetric regions, there exists a unique spatial configuration that is absorbing and globally...

This article provides a survey of a growing body of empirical evidence that points toward the important long-term effects that historic events can have on economic development. The most recent studies, using microlevel data and more sophisticated identification techniques, have moved beyond testing whether history matters and attempt to identify exactly why history matters. The most commonly ex...

It is ironic that an article titled ‘‘Recordkeeping alters economic history by promoting reciprocity’’ (1) contains no evidence at all from economic history. ‘‘Economic history’’ is typically defined as the empirical record of past economic practices and processes. The fact that recordkeeping by modern subjects alters the result of a game is not directly informative about past economies; a cruc...

In this essay I would like to confront a number of fundamental puzzles in economic history/development--puzzles that go to the heart of the nature of economic change. They can be broadly classified under two general headings: how to account for the uneven and erratic pattern of both historical change and contemporary development and how to model this processs of change and development? Can we u...

The topic of this paper immediately raises a serious methodological question: In what sense can we isolate the contribution of any individual or institution in the development of economic analysis? This is but one example of a fundamental logical problem that applies to the study of all history, that is, the difficulty of the counterfactual. For when you ask, “What is the influence of A (an eve...