with Bergeron A, Carvalho JP, Henrich J, and Nunn N. Working Paper. R&R, Review of Economic Studies.
We study the evolution of belief systems that suppress productive effort. These include concerns about the envy of others, beliefs in the importance of luck for success, disdain for competitive effort, and traditional supernatural beliefs in witchcraft or the evil eye…
Read Morewith Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, and James A. Robinson. 2017. Econometrica, 85, 4, Pp. 1065-1091. PDF. Appendix. Related links: Cato Institute.
We use variation in historical state centralization to examine the impact of institutions on cultural norms. The Kuba Kingdom, established in Central Africa in the early 17th century by King Shyaam, had more developed state institutions than the other independent villages and chieftaincies in the region. It had an unwritten constitution, separation of political powers, a judicial system with courts and juries, a police force and military, taxation, and significant public goods provision…
Read Morewith Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, and James A. Robinson. 2015. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 105, 5, Pp. 1-8. PDF Appendix. VoxEU.
Despite the salience of ethnicity in African politics, recent experimental research finds little evidence of intrinsic coethnic bias. We develop a new measure of ethnic bias that is less sensitive to experimenter demand effects and other forms of measurement error. Specifically, we argue that a tablet-based implicit association test (IAT) mitigates measurement error concerns associated with studying interethnic preferences…
Read Morewith L. van Dorp, et al. 2019. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(2):593-598. PDF. BBC Inside Science.
Few phenomena have had as profound or long-lasting consequences in human history as the emergence of large-scale centralized states in the place of smaller-scale and more-local societies. This study examines a fundamental, and yet, unexplored consequence of state formation: its genetic legacy…
Read Morewith Lang, M. et al. 2019. Proceedings of the Royal Academy B286: 20190202. PDF.
Explaining the emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. Among several contributing mechanisms, one hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behavior toward geographically distant co-religionists who are unlikely to reciprocate…
Read Morewith Gilbert Tshiebue Kapepula and Max Mbosho Konshi. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 12, 150–170. doi: 10.1080/2153599X.2021.2006289. Paper.
This paper explores an empirical puzzle: individuals in urban D.R. Congo who were unsure if they would be able to provide sufficient food for their families gave more of their money away to anonymous receivers in behavioral games. They were especially likely to share money evenly. We argue that this surprising prosocial behavior reflects sharing norms associated with informal insurance, for which more materially insecure individuals presumably have higher demand. We further argue that such sharing norms are sustained in urban Congo by Pentecostal churches…
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