Research
Macro Development, Historical Economics & Long-Run Growth
Cultural Capital and the Productivity of Ideas: Evidence from Historical Texts
Working Paper (July 2026).
[PDF]
How much did changing culture contribute to modern economic growth? I use large language models to read 23,000 historical books and construct an Innovation Wedge measuring cultural resistance to new ideas. In a calibrated growth model, its decline explains two-thirds of the first sustained acceleration in productivity growth between 1500 and 1700.
— Explore the data: Culture Compass — compare the cultural profiles of 276 historical books, from The Prince to Venture Smith's memoir.
Selection, Patience, and the Interest Rate (with Alex Trew)
Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics, Vol. 2, No. 1 (March 2024).
[Published Version]  |  [PDF]
Why has the global interest rate fallen steadily for the last seven centuries? We build a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model to show that a process of natural selection leading to increasing societal patience can explain this long-run trend.
Patience and the Social Discount Rate (with Alex Trew)
National Institute Economic Review, forthcoming (working-paper version: July 2026).
[PDF]
How should governments discount costs and benefits far into the future? We argue that pure time preference may itself decline across generations and use the UK Green Book to show how this changes long-horizon appraisal.
Structural Transformation & Misallocation
Extracting Wedges: Misallocation and Taxation in the Oil Industry (with L. Ahlvik, J.J. Andersen, T. Harding, and A. Trew)
Working Paper (Updated: June 2025).
[PDF]
How much productivity is lost because resources are misallocated in the oil industry, and how much is caused by tax policy? Using global field-level data from 1900–2023, we find that misallocation is substantial and that variation in revenue tax rates explains more than half of it, primarily by distorting input use within producing fields.
— Earlier draft: "What's in a wedge: Misallocation and Taxation in the Oil Industry" (with Gerhard Toews, 2018) [PDF]
Velocity in the Long Run: Money and Structural Transformation (with Antonio Mele)
Review of Economic Dynamics, 31 (2019), 393–410.
[Published Version]  |  [PDF]
Structural Transformation and the Oil Price
Review of Economic Dynamics, 17(3) (2014), 458-504.
[Published Version]  |  [PDF]  |  [Code & Data]
Windfalls, Structural Transformation and Specialization (with Karlygash Kuralbayeva)
Journal of International Economics, 90 (2013), 273–301.
[Published Version]  |  [PDF]
Government Size, Misallocation and the Resource Curse
Commodity Prices and Macroeconomic Policy (eds. R. Caputo & R. Chang), Vol. 22 (2016), 197-232.
[Published Version / PDF]
Energy, Natural Resources & Environmental Economics
Boom Goes the Price: Giant Resource Discoveries and Real Exchange Rate Appreciation (with T. Harding and G. Toews)
Economic Journal, Vol. 130, Issue 630 (August 2020), 1715-1728.
[Published Version]  |  [PDF]
Dirty Little Secrets: Inferring Fossil-Fuel Subsidies from Patterns in Emission Intensities
Working Paper.
[PDF]
Into the Mire: A Closer Look at Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Calgary School of Public Policy SPP Research Papers, 9(10) (2016).
[PDF]
On the Mechanics of the "Green Solow Model"
Working Paper (February 2013).
[PDF]
Harnessing Oil Revenues in Ghana (with Rick van der Ploeg and Samuel Wills)
IGC Working Paper (July 2011).
[PDF]
— Policy Engagement: Formed the basis for policy advice to the Government of Ghana.
Early Mathematics Work
Factorization of Polynomials and Real Analytic Functions
September 2004.
[PDF]  |  [Mathematica Code]