Hamas, Taliban and the Jewish Underground: An Economist's View of Radical Religious Militias

Can rational choice modeling explain destructive behavior among the Taliban, Hama and other radical religious militias? This paper proposes a club good framework which emphasizes the function of voluntary religious organizations as efficient providers of local public goods in the absence of government provision. The sacrifices which these groups demand are economically efficient (as in Iannaccone (1992)) and make them well suited for solving the extreme principal-agent problems present in militia production. Thus the analysis can explain why religious radicals create such effective militias. Seemingly gratuitous acts of violence by group members destroy their outside options, increasing the incentive compatibility of loyalty. The analysis has clear implications for economic policy to contain militias.

Fertility, Migration, and Altruism

Consider migration to a higher income region as a human capital investment in which parents bear migration costs and children share returns. Migrants from a population with heterogeneous intergenerational discount rates will be self-selected on intergenerational altruism. Thus, immigrants may be self-selected on fertility. Soviet Jews who migrate to Israel despite high migration costs have significantly more children than members of the same birth cohort who migrate later when costs are low. We distinguish selection from treatment effects using a comparison group of women who migrate after childbearing age. We also find that immigrants favor bequests more and spend more time with their grandchildren in the U.S. Health and Retirement Survey. Selection on altruism can explain why historically immigrant-absorbing countries like the U.S. have higher fertility than other countries at comparable income levels. It provides an alternative explanation for Chiswick's classic earnings-overtaking result. Selection on altruism also implies that immigrant-absorbing regions will grow faster, or have higher per capita income, or both.

Religious Extremism: The Good, The Bad, and The Deadly

This paper challenges conventional views of violent religious extremism, particularly those that emphasize militant theology. We offer an alternative analysis that helps explain the persistent demand for religion, the different types of religious that naturally arise, and the special attributes of the %u201Csectarian%u201D type. Sects are adept at producing club goods both spiritual and material. Where governments and economies function poorly, sects often become major suppliers of social services, political action, and coercive force. Their success as providers is much more due to the advantages of their organizational structure than it is to their theology. Religious militancy is most effectively controlled through a combination of policies that raise the direct costs of violence, foster religious competition, improve social services, and encourage private enterprise.

Parables of Our Talons: New Jewish Stories for Electroacoustic Voices

This thesis is a creative portfolio of written and recorded experiments and performances from September 2022 to April 2023. The culminating piece of my portfolio is a ritual performance called GOLEMATRIAK. This ritual, along with the rest of my portfolio, weaves together khazonus (Ashkenazi Jewish cantorial singing), extended vocal techniques, and electronic dance music in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. During a historic rise of global antisemitism and transphobia, GOLEMATRIARK is an exaltation of queer, diasporic Jewish power. The golem is a proto-robot made of inorganic matter that one animates through sacred Jewish texts. I have been creating my own golems in the form of speaker-creatures, a collection of DIY speakers made of PVC pipes, frame drums, and metals that emit electroacoustic dance music with samples of my voice. In this text I will dance on the edges of the sound/word, voice/drum, and human/machine with documentation of my music, personal anecdotes, creative writing, sacred Jewish teachings, and the wisdom of Emilie Conrad, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Rachel Carson, Tanya Tagag, and others concerned with embodied, matriarchal wisdom

Implications of Skill-Biased Technological Change: International Evidence

Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and in other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill-biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit. The pervasiveness of this technological change is important for two reasons. First, it is an immediate and testable implication of technological change. Second, under standard assumptions, the more pervasive the skill-biased technological change the greater the increase in the embodied supply of less skilled workers and the greater the depressing effect on their relative wages through world goods prices. In contrast, in the Heckscher-Ohlin model with small open economies, the skill-bias of local technological changes does not affect wages. Thus, pervasiveness deals with a major criticism of skill-biased technological change as a cause. Testing the implications of pervasive, skill-biased technological change we find strong supporting evidence. First, across the OECD, most industries have increased the proportion of skilled workers employed despite rising or stable relative wages. Second, increases in demand for skills were concentrated in the same manufacturing industries in different developed countries.

Language-Skill Complementarity: Returns to Immigrant Language Acquisition

We examine the effect of language acquisition on the growth of immigrants' earnings. We gathered data on recent Soviet immigrants to Israel that include retrospective questions on earnings and language ability on entry into their current job. Language acquisition is found to interact positively with occupation level. Immigrant programmers and computer technicians have a return to tenure about three percentage points higher than that of natives; improved Hebrew language skills account for between 2/3 and 3/4 of that differential wage growth. In contrast, construction workers and gas station attendants have no convergence of wages to those of natives and language acquisition has no discernible effect on their wages. For these less skilled workers the estimated return' to Hebrew proficiency in the cross-section is entirely due to ability bias. This finding may invite a reinterpretation of other studies on the returns to language acquisition for low wage immigrants.

Does Factor-Biased Technological Change Stifle International Covergence? Evidence from Manufacturing

Factor-biased technological change implies divergent productivity growth across countries with different amounts of skill and capital per worker. I estimate the extent of factor bias within industries and countries using a 19-country panel of manufacturing data covering the 1980s. Estimates using both production functions and total factor productivity functions show that technological change is strongly biased against less-skilled workers and toward both skilled workers and capital. An industry or country with twice the capital and skill per less-skilled worker enjoys 1.4%-1.8% faster total factor productivity growth annually due to the effects of factor-bias. These results are consistent with the empirical literature on skill-biased technological change. They may well explain why conditional convergence' of per capita income across countries is so slow.

Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice: An Economist's View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews

The Israeli Ultra-Orthodox population doubles each seventeen years. With 60 % of prime aged males attending Yeshiva rather than working, that community is rapidly outgrowing its resources. Why do fathers with families in poverty choose Yeshiva over work? Draft deferments subsidize Yeshiva attendance, yet attendance typically continues long after they are draft exempt. We explain this puzzle with a club good model in which Yeshiva attendance signals commitment to the community. Subsidizing membership in a club with sacrifice as an entry requirement induces increased sacrifice, compounding the distortion and dissipating the subsidy. Policies treating members and potential entrants equally are Pareto improving. The analysis may generalize to other by increasing the stringency of prohibitions and sacrifice.

Is skill-biased technological change here yet ? Evidence from Indian manufacturing in the 1990

Most high and middle-income countries showed symptoms of skill-biased technological change in the 1980s. India-a low income country-did not, perhaps because India's traditionally controlled economy may have limited the transfer of technologies from abroad. However the economy underwent a sharp reform and a manufacturing boom in the 1990s, raising the possibility that technology absorption may have accelerated during the past decade. The authors investigate the hypothesis that skill-biased technological change did in fact arrive in India in the 1990s using panel data disaggregated by industry and state from the Annual Survey of Industry. These data confirm that while the 1980s were a period of falling skills demand, the 1990s showed generally rising demand for skills, with variation across states. They find that increased output and capital-skill complementarity appear to be the best explanations of skill upgrading in the 1990s. Skill upgrading did not occur in the same set of industries in India as it did in other countries, suggesting that increased demand for skills in Indian manufacturing is not due to the international diffusion of recent vintages of skill-biased technologies.Economic Theory&Research,Labor Markets,Investment and Investment Climate,Education and Digital Divide,Water and Industry

From Empty Pews to Empty Cradles: Fertility Decline Among European Catholics

3sìThe Catholic countries of Europe pose a puzzle for economic demography – their fertility is the lowest in history despite low female labor force participation rates. Total fertility rates now average 1.4 lifetime children per woman in Southern Europe. We apply a panel on church attendance and clergy employment from 1960-2000 to the study of fertility decline among European Catholics since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Though Catholic theology is fairly uniform across countries, the level of services provided, (as measured by nuns per Catholic) varies considerably both across countries and over time, indicating large differences in Church provision of education, health, welfare and other social services. We find that the interaction of service provision (nuns/catholic) decline and religiosity (church attendance) decline strongly predicts declining fertility. The nuns/catholic effect provides evidence that religion affects fertility not only through preferences but also functionally, through social service provision. Moreover, church attendance is apparently necessary for Church social service provision to affect fertility. Nuns outperform priests in predicting fertility, suggesting that social service provision may matter more for fertility than do the theological services provided by priests which might affect preferences. In the context of a simple model in which religious services can raise fertility either by lowering the shadow cost of a mother’s time or by lowering the effective cost of raising children, the data imply that the latter effect dominatesopenopenEli Berman; Larry Iannaccone; Giuseppe RagusaEli, Berman; Larry, Iannaccone; Ragusa, Giusepp