Daughters, Diplomats, and Death: How Economists Use Natural Experiments to Decipher Our World

A collection of eye-opening natural experiments, showing how economists uncover cause-and-effect relationships and reveal insights about our world.

Does having a daughter change how a congressperson votes? How did a nineteenth-century doctor help discover germs? Is it better to go first or second in a penalty shootout? Why don’t diplomats pay their parking tickets? Do leaders really matter? These are all questions economists ask. Some of these questions are serious, others less consequential...