Ömer Özak

Southern Methodist University | SMU · Department of Economics

This paper analyzes whether the propensity to secede by subnational regions responds mostly to differences in income per capita or to distinct identities. We explore this question in a quantitative political economy model where people's willingness to finance a public good depends on their income and identity. Using high-resolution economic and lin...

This paper analyzes whether the propensity to secede by subnational regions responds mostly to differences in income per capita or to distinct identities. We explore this question in a quantitative political economy model where people's willingness to finance a public good depends on their income and identity. Using high-resolution economic and lin...

We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous state-building projects, which determines their extent...

We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous state-building projects, which determines their extent...

We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous state-building projects, which determines their extent...

Culture has played a pivotal role in human evolution. Yet, the ability of social scientists to study culture is limited by the currently available measurement instruments. Scholars of culture must regularly choose between scalable but sparse survey-based methods or restricted but rich ethnographic methods. Here, we demonstrate that massive online s...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered a process of adaptation reducing mortality from infect...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered a process of adaptation reducing mortality from infect...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered a process of adaptation reducing mortality from infect...

Culture has played a pivotal role in human evolution. Yet, the ability of social scientists to study culture is limited by currently available measurement instruments. Scholars of culture must regularly choose between scalable but sparse survey-based methods or restricted but rich ethnographic methods. Here, we demonstrate that massive online socia...

This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-industrial societies. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it shows that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity were conducive to economic specialization in the pre-...

This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it shows that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity were conducive to economic specialization in the pre-mode...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary non-civil conflict in Africa. Exploiting variations across artificial regions (i.e., grids of 50x50km) within an ethnicity's historical homeland, we document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are concentrated close to historical ethnic borders. F...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary non-civil conflict in Africa. Exploiting variations across artificial regions (i.e., grids of 50x50km) within an ethnicity's historical homeland, we document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are concentrated close to historical ethnic borders. F...

This research establishes the influence of linguistic traits on human behavior. Exploiting variations in the languages spoken by children of migrants with identical ancestral countries of origin, the analysis indicates that the presence of periphrastic future tense and its association with long-term orientation has a significant positive impact on...

This research explores the geographical origins of the coevolution of cultural and linguistic traits in the course of human history, relating the geographical roots of long-term orientation to the structure of the future tense, the agricultural determinants of gender bias to the presence of sex-based grammatical gender, and the ecological origins o...

This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it shows that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity were conducive to economic specialization in the pre-mode...

This research explores the effects of distance to the pre-industrial technological frontiers on comparative economic development in the course of human history. It establishes theoretically and empirically that distance to the frontier had a persistent non-monotonic effect on a country’s pre-industrial economic development. In particular, advancing...

This research explores the geographical origins of the coevolution of cultural and linguistic traits in the course of human history, relating the geographical roots of long-term orientation to the structure of the future tense, the agricultural determinants of gender bias to the presence of sex-based grammatical gender, and the ecological origins o...

This research explores the direct and barrier effects of culture on economic development. It shows both theoretically and empirically that whenever the technological frontier is at the top or bottom of the world distribution of a cultural value, there exists an observational equivalence between absolute cultural distances and cultural distances rel...

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It ad-vances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that geographical variations in the natural re-turn to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on the distribution of time preference across societies. In particular, exploiting a natural ex...

This research suggests that the geographical distance from the location of the pre-industrial technological frontier has a non-monotonic and persistent effect on development. While remoteness from this frontier diminished imitation, it fostered the emergence of a culture conducive to innovation and knowledge creation, which has persisted into the m...

I study how boundedly rational agents can learn the solution to an infinite horizon optimal consumption problem under uncertainty and liquidity constraints. I present conditions for the existence of an optimal linear consumption rule and characterize it. Additionally, I use an empirically plausible theory of learning to generate a class of adaptive...

This paper exploits cross-country variation in the degree of geographical isolation, prior to the advent of sea-faring and airborne transportation technologies, to examine its impact on the course of economic development across the globe. The empirical investigation establishes that prehistoric geographical isolation has generated a persistent bene...

This paper exploits cross-country variation in the degree of geographical isolation, prior to the advent of seafaring and airborne transportation technologies, to examine its impact on the course of economic development across the globe. The empirical investigation establishes that prehistoric geographical isolation has generated a persistent benef...

This paper proposes and studies a theory of adaptive consumption behavior under income uncertainty and liquidity constraints. We assume that consumption is governed by a linear function of wealth, whose coefficients are revised each period by a procedure, which, although sophisticated, places few informational or computational demands on the consum...

This paper exploits cross-country variation in the degree of geographical isolation, prior to the advent of seafaring and airborne transportation technologies, to examine its impact on the course of economic development across the globe. The empirical investigation establishes that prehistoric geographical isolation has generated a persistent benef...

Glossary Definition of the Subject Introduction Discrete Two-Sided Matching Models Continuous Two-Sided Matching Model with Additively Separable Utility Functions Hybrid One-to-One Matching Model Incentives Future Directions Bibliography

La creencia en que el individuo dejado a su propio y libre albedrío actuaría buscando su propio bienestar, y lograría, sin proponérselo, también el máximo bienestar para toda la sociedad, es la premisa máxima del pensamiento liberal. Esta creencia implica que no es necesaria la intervención de ninguna institución, especialmente del Estado, para log...