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Nowadays, academic journals of high standing rarely accept a conceptual idea in a paper not instantly accompanied by econometric estimates. The idea would almost certainly get rejected. Empirical validation based on past statistical data has produced an unfortunate backward orientation in economics. While one can learn from the past, this approach fails when the underlying conditions strongly change. The paper suggests various possibilities to overcome the intense publication pressure in so‐called top journals and the overemphasis on instant empirical evidence. Academia is, however, unlikely to adapt. As economics is too backward oriented, other disciplines or cranks may well dominate future economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The self‐sacrifice of suicide terrorists is subject to sophisticated models of altruistic sacrifice. Yet, a simpler account is that it reflects common suicidal tendencies. This paper offers new micro and macro evidence supportive of this hypothesis. At the micro level, the paper compares a sample of suicide and non‐suicide terrorists in the United States from 1948 to 2017. Results indicate that suicide terrorists are more likely to display various established suicidal risk factors including history of child abuse, absent parent/s, and relationship troubles. Results from Bayesian Model Averaging indicate that suicide risk factors outperform other individual factors (e.g., ideology and lone‐actor terrorism) in explaining suicide terrorism. At the macro level, the paper takes advantage of the cross‐national variations in suicidal tendencies to explain the incidence of suicide and non‐suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1991 to 2014. Results reveal that countries with higher share of deaths from suicide display higher incidences of suicide attacks but similar incidences of non‐suicide attacks. However, other contextual factors such as the share of Muslims also predict the incidence of suicide terrorism. The decision of some terrorists to sacrifice their life may well have been subject to over‐theorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how climate change has become a polarizing and politicized issue in the United States and assesses the relationship between regional exposure to the green economy and voting in US elections over the course of a decade. After measuring the share of employment related to the green economy at county level, I estimate the impact of county‐level exposure to this economy on the share of votes cast for Democrats in elections for the House of Representatives and the Presidency. I find that US counties that have been more exposed to the green economy have increased their share of votes cast for Democrats in Congressional elections since the 2016 elections, based on both county‐level and constructed district‐level data. This is because Democratic politicians are considerably more likely to adopt pro‐green positions, making them an attractive choice for voters seeking representatives who will promote green policies. This paper also finds that a shift toward Democratic candidates has mostly occurred in Republican incumbent districts with a high proportion of green‐intensive employment that did not receive any support for green investment from the government after 2016. The results imply that climate change has become an important determinant of voting decisions and that this change in motivation on the part of voters has come about primarily with the aim of punishing Republican incumbents rather than rewarding Democratic incumbents or challengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper finds robust evidence that economic freedom improves the quality of education. This is probably mainly because economic freedom incentivizes parents to invest in high‐quality education for their children and helps them to do so. It also incentivizes and helps both governments and private providers to deliver high‐quality education. The paper uses two different indicators of educational quality: PISA scores and the World Bank's harmonized test scores. The magnitudes of the estimated effects of economic freedom on both indicators are substantial. They are even larger once the indirect impact of economic freedom via GDP per capita and, to a lesser extent, once the indirect impact via government education expenditure is taken into account. The paper uses data on up to 49 countries for PISA scores and up to 137 countries for World Bank scores. It accounts for the endogeneity of economic freedom and controls for all major determinants of educational quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the theory of competitive federalism, focusing specifically on Hayek's and Buchanan's significant contributions to this theory. Looking at the rivalry between sub‐units in federal systems and drawing an analogy between market competition and intergovernmental competition, the theory of competitive federalism stresses the critical role viable exit options play as operating force in both arenas. The principal claim argued for in this paper is that by exclusively focusing on exit in its territorial dimension, the theory of competitive federalism obfuscates the fact that “exit” can mean two critically different things in federal systems. It can mean exiting from the territory over which a government exercises its assigned authority, and it can mean exiting from a polity in the sense of giving up one's membership status in the respective community. The paper discusses the nature, the significance, and the implications of the difference between these two kinds of exit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of externally funded trade policy reforms on firm productivity by combining data from the International Aid Transparency Initiative and World Bank Enterprise Surveys. By specifying baseline and end‐line surveys based on the 2006 to 2020 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we find that 70 of 83 countries received external funds for trade policy reforms, and primarily use records based on 45,886 firms with data on productivity across these countries. Applying difference‐in‐differences and triple‐difference techniques, this paper finds that the impact of externally funded trade policy reforms is significant, accounting for 12% of firms' average productivity growth in the recipient countries relative to firms in non‐recipient countries. We also show that externally funded trade policy reforms improve firms' international‐trade‐climate in the recipient countries by 0.17 standard deviations, which translates into a 27% increase in the average productivity of firms with a good international‐trade‐climate in recipient countries over that of firms in non‐recipient countries and firms with poor international trade climate in recipient countries. These results suggest that interventions should focus on financing trade policy reforms that are more likely to improve the international‐trade‐climate of firms in the recipient countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meta‐analysis studies the literature reporting estimates of one parameter, which at present is assumed positive. The purpose of the analysis is to find the best meta‐average, which corrects the mean of the estimates for bias. The two main biases are: (i) Publication bias, where the correction nearly always makes the average smaller. (ii) Omitted variable bias, where the correction typically makes the average larger. Consequently, the bias is likely to increase if the correction is for the wrong bias. This allows a game of meta‐mining to be played. A case study demonstrates the scope for meta‐mining, and that it has been done. The game of meta‐mining is surely against the purpose of meta‐analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries with abundant natural resources often possess greater wealth, yet the impact of these resources on economic growth remains unclear. This paper examines how natural‐resource abundance and its volatility impact economic growth. It questions whether natural resources themselves are a curse or if the negative growth effects are due to the volatility of natural‐resource revenues. The study also investigates how volatility of natural resources affects key economic growth channels, such as investment, human capital, and institutional quality. Using the standard panel model and panel smooth transition regression (PSTR), the paper analyzes data from 125 countries (1988–2020). Results show that natural‐resource abundance boosts economic growth, contradicting the resource‐curse theory. However, the growth impact is non‐linear and varies with natural‐resource volatility. Countries with high volatility face up to a 22 percentage point annual GDP growth loss compared with those with low volatility, suggesting that volatility and poor government responses drive the resource‐curse paradox, not the abundance of resources per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers an alternate dimension of government institutions associated with the separation of powers between government and its central bank. A more independent central bank is consistent with greater institutional quality and constraints on government. We propose that central bank independence influences the prevalence of the shadow, or underground, economy. Using cross‐country panel data for over 100 nations over the period 1991 to 2012, the results from instrumental variables techniques show that central bank independence curbs underground economic activity. Furthermore, considering different dimensions of independence, we find that independence related to central bank CEO, policy formation, and central bank lending are effective at checking the shadow sector. Overall, these findings are robust to a different measure of the underground economy, correcting for the potential influence of outliers, controlling for the impact of additional factors, accounting for heterogeneity related to the level of development, and considering the heterogeneity related to the prevalence of the shadow sector. The main implication of the results is that nations seeking to reduce the prevalence of the underground economy would benefit from policies that promote central bank independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friendship‐and‐love affords bonding that satisfies what can be called "transcendental preferences"—in contradistinction of "substantive preferences" afforded by, for example, food, clothes, and shelter. Substantive preferences involve ordinary "substantive cost," whereas transcendental preferences involve "bonding cost" that includes heartaches, obsession, and emotional turmoil. What about the cost of gifts such as flowers, time, and other carriers of friendship‐and‐love? The greater is the expenditure on gifts, the greater the bonding cost. This paper investigates the following question: How should we model bonding cost, which includes the cost of gift, in relation to substantive cost? Given bonding cost and substantive cost share the same budget, neoclassical economists treat them as commensurable and, hence, transcendental and substantive preferences make up a unidimensional objective function. This treatment, however, originates the "gift anomaly": If people easily substitute between the two genera of preferences, why do they consider the demand of payments for visiting their grandmothers—or payments for voting and sexual intercourse—as repugnant (taboo)? To solve the gift anomaly, this paper is critical of the standard economist's entry point. This paper proposes bonding and substantive costs as incommensurable and, corollary, transcendental and substantive preferences as incommensurable as well. This paper further shows how, without undermining the incommensurability thesis, the incommensurability is up to a limit: the two genera of costs and, corollary, the two genera of preferences are still linked via the income effect—as opposed to the substitution effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media stars gain star‐status with uploads on social media pages like YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. One of the most popular platforms is "Instagram" owned by Meta/Facebook. The growing social, cultural, and economic power of so‐called influencers raises questions about key drivers of success and, moreover, distribution of income on social media platforms. Instagram has been accused of strategically favoring images with nude content. In order to shed light on this socio‐critical aspect, this paper examines the following research questions: Does body exposure drive income success on Instagram? Is there a difference between male and female content in this regard? This paper empirically analyzes 500 top Instagram stars within the categories (1) fashion and beauty, (2) fitness and sports, (3) music, (4) photo and arts, and (5) food and vegan. The data provide information on popularity, posting behavior, and price estimates per post. Using hybrid regression models, the results show indeed positive impact of body exposure on monetary success. Accounts with high level of body exposure achieve higher prices and advertising revenues than accounts with less nudity, regardless of the gender. Regarding gender differences, male content achieves on average higher advertising prices, whereas female accounts provide more branded content and eventually achieve higher advertising revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the role of the 1948 currency and economic reform in West Germany for growth and social cohesion in Germany and Europe. It describes the theoretical foundation by Walter Eucken and the implementation and defense of the new economic order by Ludwig Erhard. The paper stresses the positive impact of the market economy on growth and welfare in Germany and Europe. Then, it is shown that Eucken's constituting principles of the market economy were gradually eroded after euro introduction in course of crises, with the negative repercussions on growth and equality being explained. The policy conclusion is that only the reconstitution of price stability in the euro area can prevent a further decline of welfare in Europe. The 1948 economic reforms provide an important blueprint for the necessary reform process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actual environmental pollution will worsen people's perception of environmental problems, which may affect people's perception of government corruption, and thus affect the governments' credibility and social stability. From the micro perspective of residents' comprehensive feelings on environmental issues, this paper uses panel data for the period 2014–2018 obtained from a large‐scale dynamics survey in China to investigate the impact of environmental issues on corruption perception. The empirical results suggest that residents' perception of environmental problems has a significantly positive linear correlation with their corruption perception. Moreover, the causal explanation of this correlation is strengthened after the introduction of exogenous environmental condition variables that profoundly affect residents' environmental perception and after mitigating endogenous bias via the instrumental variable method. The findings of this study deeply reveal the political value of environmental governance, suggesting that the deterioration of environmental problems can increase public perception of government corruption, and this relationship is distinct in different demographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an economic model to study the philosophical problem of evil. God's creation of the world is modeled as a problem of optimal incentives. A principal (God) must choose a world so that the populating agents behave according to his benevolent objective. In a world, the physical environment resembles a contract that determines the rewards and punishments for different choices. The agents' behavioral rule determines how they respond to these incentives. I characterize a contract and a behavioral rule that solve the principal's problem, and evil is evidenced. Specifically, evil endogenously aligns the agents' actions with the principal's objective. Other insights on the origin, cause, and role of evil are also derived from the model. The result of this analysis is a theodicy arisen from an economic model. As a byproduct, this paper shows how an economic model can be used to study philosophical or theological questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper establishes that the worldwide distribution of political instability has its deep historical roots in genetic diversity, predetermined over the prehistoric course of the exodus of Homo sapiens from East Africa tens of thousands of years ago. It proposes that the relationship between prehistorically determined genetic diversity and contemporary political instability follows a U‐shaped pattern. More specifically, genetic diversity at first reduces the persistence of political instability by increasing the opportunity cost of engaging in riots and revolts. However, genetically fragmented societies tend to suffer from interpersonal mistrust and the under‐provision of public goods, which plausibly undermine the establishment of politically stable regimes. Using an ancestry‐adjusted index of predicted genetic diversity, this paper consistently finds precise estimates that genetic diversity imparts a U‐shaped influence on different measures of political instability and the probability of observing the occurrence of riots and revolts across 141 countries. Furthermore, the contribution of genetic diversity to political instability is at least partially mediated through income/productivity levels, the provision of public goods, income inequality and social trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institution of liability serves to mitigate the lack of care in almost all areas, whether private or business. However, we have not yet found such an institution in political decision-making. Surprisingly, the literature has not discussed a specific institution that subjects political actors who fail to exercise due diligence in their decision-making regarding personal liability. Hence, this paper aims to fill this gap and derive the necessity of internalizing the negative effects resulting from the imperfections of the market for political services in general and the democratic process, particularly by a liability rule. To design the new institution, we draw on the findings of corporate governance, combining economic thinking in incentives and legal knowledge expressed in the law of the corporation. In this respect, this paper is the first to make a concrete proposal for political liability accompanied by a political judgment rule. However, it is important to emphasize that the aim is not to punish a wrong decision but to provide strong incentives to prevent it ex ante. Political liability must be understood as a process-oriented institution that considers uncertainty and decision-making complexities. By proposing and analyzing this new institution, this work contributes to a broader discussion of incentive structures in the political process of modern democracies and shows how the political sphere can learn from the corporate world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the assumption that citizenship is property that would be more valuable if it were transferable, the paper explores the idea of commodification of citizenship. The paper provides arguments in favor of commodification and recommendations to how the market for citizenships should be designed. A market for citizenships could result in an improved matching between employer and employee when citizens swap citizenship with each other. Successful States could issue new citizenships and thus make it possible for a greater share of the world population to live and work within the countries with the best institutions. The combined effect would be a higher global productivity. Additionally, market prices on citizenships would provide information on institutional quality and thus provide politicians with information on voters' preferences as well as voters with information on the quality of the work of the government. The market value of a tradable citizenship is also found to be a candidate as tax base for a redistributive tax on a global level that could address some of the inherent inequality with birthright citizenships. Those potential benefits aside, several problems with a market for citizenship are also found and discussed, among those the age-dependent value of citizenships. Received: 14 June 2021 Revised: 31 March 2022 Accepted: 25 February 2023 DOI: 10.1111/kykl.12347 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2023 The Author. Kyklos published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Kyklos. 2023;76:705--723. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kykl 705 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies suggest that employees of social enterprises experience greater job satisfaction than employees of for‐profit organizations, although their pay and employment contracts are usually less favorable. Based on linked employer–employee data from a French survey on employment characteristics and industrial relations and using a decomposition method developed by Gelbach (2016), this paper aims to explain this somewhat paradoxical result. Focusing on work organization variables, we show that the specific work organization of social enterprises explains a large part of the observed job satisfaction differential both in general and more specifically, in terms of satisfaction with access to training and working conditions. By detailing the components of work organization, the higher job satisfaction reported by employees in social enterprises stems from their greater autonomy and better access to information. In contrast to earlier studies, however, our results show that these work organization variables do not have more value for social enterprise employees than for for‐profit organization employees in the case of overall job satisfaction. This result casts doubt on the widespread hypothesis that social enterprise employees attach more weight to the nonmonetary advantages of their work than their counterparts in for‐profit organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study whether present‐day women's political participation in sub‐Saharan Africa is associated to the temporary gender ratio imbalances caused by the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, taking into account pre‐existing gender norms influenced by kinship structures. To study the interrelatedness between historical exposure to the slave trades, patrilineality and their association to contemporary women's political participation, we use individual‐level data for 35,595 women from 28 sub‐Saharan African countries from three rounds of Afrobarometer surveys, georeferenced to historical ethnic region kinship and slave trade data. Our findings suggest that a woman's ethnic region historical exposure to the transatlantic slave trade is associated with an increase in her likelihood to vote today, however, only in non‐patrilineal ethnic regions. This effect is mitigated in patrilineal ethnic regions, where women have less decision‐making power. This paper contributes to the literature on the contemporary sub‐national effects of the slave trades and the historical causes of gender gaps in political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of political elections on public policies during the Covid pandemic, distinguishing between economic (supportive) and noneconomic (restrictive) policies in a panel of countries that held political elections during 3 years of pandemic, 2020–2022. An event study, controlling for the evolution of the pandemic in terms of Covid cases and deaths, as well as country and time fixed effects, reveals significant adjustments in the Covid‐related restrictive, lockdown‐type, policies but not in the Covid‐related economic support policies before political elections during the first half of the pandemic. The pre‐election policy adjustments included a gradual easing of the restrictions before elections and were driven by the changes in the restrictions that were more likely to directly affect the electorate, such as the restrictions on workplace closing, gatherings, and public events. The presence of the pre‐election restrictions adjustment is conditional on the economic and political characteristics of the country, such as the state of democracy, the degree of political competition, the overall restrictions stringency, and the income level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how investors' perceptions of firms' philanthropic behaviors alter the effect of corporate philanthropy on costs of equity capital. Using a sample of Chinese A‐share listed firms from 2007 to 2018, we find that firms making philanthropic donations have higher equity financing costs. In contrast, firms without politically connected executives, experiencing provincial official turnovers, and located in provinces with fiscal pressure do not see an increase in costs of equity capital. In addition, Chinese investors consider strategic corporate philanthropy to establish political connections less valuable after anticorruption campaigns are launched, hence requiring higher rates of return from firms making monetary donations. Overall, this paper provides evidence that investors' perceptions of firm behavior are shaped by unique institutional factors in emerging markets, resulting in unintended economic consequences for firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how ethnic diversity affects the provision of public goods in democratic and non‐democratic societies when political parties compete for voter support by offering a mix of private and public goods. Our model implies that increasing diversity that leads to more heterogeneous preferences for public goods decreases the provision of public goods in democracies, where political power is distributed equally among citizens, while there is a weaker or no effect in non‐democracies, where political power is distributed unequally among citizens. When measuring diversity by ethnic fractionalization and public good provision by either levels of government expenses, expenditures on health, or life expectancy, we indeed observe a negative association between diversity and the provision of public goods in democracies but no or only a weak association in non‐democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the effects of data transparency on economic growth for developing economies over a unique time period ‐ at the onset of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis and thereafter. Data transparency is defined as the timely production of credible statistics as measured by the statistical capacity indicator. The paper finds that data transparency has a positive effect on real gross domestic product per capita during a period of considerable uncertainty. The estimates indicate an elasticity of the magnitude of 0.03 percent per year, which is much larger than the elasticity of trade openness and schooling in the estimation sample. The empirics employ a variety of econometric estimators, including dynamic panel and cross‐sectional instrumental variables estimators, with the latter approach yielding a higher estimated elasticity. The findings are robust to the inclusion of several factors in addition to political institutions and exogenous commodity‐price and external debt‐financing shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hayek and Buchanan endorsed Böhm's “private law society” as expressive of the ideal of a government of laws, and not of men. But they also acknowledged that among the many, the enforceability of legal custom, adjudication, and legislation must be politically guaranteed by a state. Due to unavoidable state‐involvement, risks of excessive rent‐seeking and authoritarian arbitrary government loom large once “rules of rule change” enable sophisticated forms of ruling by law. Even if in WEIRDS (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Societies) legal rules are enacted, modified, and derogated exclusively according to legal “rules of rule change,” the prevalence of the key attributes of “generality, certainty, and equality of enforcement” of the Rule of Law is in no way guaranteed. — The paper addresses this and the role, nature, and significance of constraining ruling by law through practicing the “political ideal of the Rule of Law”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of economic policy uncertainty on local government debt issuance in China and identifies a transmission channel through the cost of capital. Our findings demonstrate that economic policy uncertainty raises the cost of external financing for local governments, leading to decreased levels of debt issuance. Specifically, a 1% increase in uncertainty related to economic policy variations leads to a reduction in government debt issuance of 0.0478%. In addition, our analysis reveals that local governments located in regions experiencing lower fiscal pressure, lower economic catch‐up pressure, and higher sensitivity to uncertainty are more responsive to economic policy uncertainty changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the work of two twentieth‐century liberal economists, Friedrich Hayek and James Buchanan, who have made lasting contributions to our understanding of the role of the market in a free society. I argue that they offer significantly different but complementary visions of the value of the market as a system of individual freedom. Hayek's vision is of the price system as a marvel of spontaneous order which solves a fundamental economic problem – that of making efficient use of a totality of knowledge that is divided between individuals. Buchanan's vision is of the market as a space in which individuals are free to make voluntary exchanges. In his words, ‘this is all that there is to it’: the market is not a solution to any collective problem. These visions have a common blind spot. Both writers recognise the need for programmes of social insurance and consider how they should structured so as to be as compatible as possible with the workings of a market economy and a liberal democracy. But, I argue, neither sees the full importance of social insurance in a justification of the market system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper conducts a robustness analysis of the impact of diasporas on institutional quality in home countries. Using the Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries (DIOC), we attest that the home country institutional development role of diasporas found in the literature is robust to modifications in terms of the dataset, the measurement of diasporas and the instrumental variable procedures used in our cross‐sectional and panel analyses. The novelty of this paper is that we take the heterogeneity of diasporas into account in terms of their distribution across host countries, their duration of stay, and the level of development of their home countries. As in earlier literature, we find robust evidence that diasporas enhance institutional quality in home countries. We also find that the intensity of the diffusion of advanced institutions from developed host countries to home countries through the international migration channel is weaker with diasporas characterized by shorter average duration of stay and with diasporas from developing home countries. However, this diffusion effect is not significantly related to the distribution of diasporas across OECD host countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study how free labor mobility agreements in Europe, usually thought to favor inward migration, might actually create good incentives for already settled migrants to exit their host country. Using outmigration data between 1990 and 2011, a period of observation where some countries entered the EU and especially a period during which Schengen agreements have been progressively implemented by a large number of European countries, we could test this conjecture. While the evidence for EU is mixed, we find very strong evidence that Schengen did increase migrations outflows by 40 to 53%. The effect appears to be even higher for outmigrants originating from Eastern Europe after their countries' accession to Schengen. Also, and consistent with the hypothesis of preferences for living at home or in a country with a close culture to home, the effect of Schengen on outmigration happens to be smaller when the countries of origin and of residence of the outmigrants are close in terms of their cultural traits. Also, we document that the Schengen effect is significantly higher for outmigration flows than for immigration flows by almost 20 percentage points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between political equality and quality of government. Our hypothesis is that political equality fosters access to inclusive education and ultimately promotes good governance. We empirically test this hypothesis using data for 145 countries with different levels of economic development. In order to overcome potential endogeneity problems, our identification strategy exploits the variation in political equality in geographically neighbouring countries by means of spatial econometric techniques. The results reveal a positive and statistically significant effect of political equality on the quality of government. This implies that countries where political power is more evenly distributed tend on average to have higher levels of institutional quality. In fact, this result is not affected by the inclusion in the analysis of a substantial number of controls that may be correlated with both political equality and quality of government, including the extent of democracy and the degree of economic inequality. In fact, the observed link between political equality and governance remains robust to alternative measures of quality of government, estimation techniques, and other sensitivity checks. Our estimates also show that education acts as a transmission channel linking political equality and quality of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper applies connectivity measures—membership status, contiguity, inverse distance, and power projection—to investigate North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense burden sharing at the operational or (defense spending) categorical levels (i.e., personnel, infrastructure, equipment, and operations and maintenance [O&M]) during the post‐Cold War era, 1991–2022. Alternative spatial weights, assigned to allies' operational‐based spillovers, indicate diverse free‐riding responses with the greatest free riding characterizing equipment, followed by O&M and then personnel outlays. Infrastructure spending, which does not permit much substitution among allies, is understandably characterized by the least inter‐ally free riding. After the Wales Summit and Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, there are marked changes to NATO free riding at the operational levels, with equipment spending displaying reduced free riding. Generally, there is little evidence of a positive reaction to increased Russian military expenditures; however, there is some enhanced operational spending by NATO allies nearest to Russia after 2014. Also, we estimate simultaneous spatial autoregressive models to gauge inter‐operational spending responses to the four kinds of spillovers, where we find interesting inter‐operational substitutions and complementarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of historical lynching on the economic opportunities of Black individuals today. Our results indicate that past lynchings have an adverse effect on the current economic opportunities of Black people, likely arising from persistent racial prejudice dating back to the early 20th century. We emphasize the importance of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and population mixing in the US South post‐1880, which led to heightened competition among racial groups for economic, social, and political prominence, ultimately resulting in a surge of lynchings. Our findings survive a series of robustness checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper underlines the importance of accounting for non‐base compensation in explaining the motherhood wage gap. We consider two alternative measures of hourly wage using Italian EU‐SILC data from 2007 to 2019: the base‐wage and the full‐wage. The former refers to the contractual base wage, while the latter includes performance‐based bonuses, productivity bonuses, commissions, pay incentives, and other extra payments. We address the endogeneity issues of motherhood and examine the effect of motherhood status across various quantiles of the wage distribution for the two hourly wage measures. Empirical findings provide evidence of a motherhood base‐wage premium, which becomes nonsignificant when using the full‐wage measure, suggesting that non‐base compensation is a source of inequality for mothers. These findings are consistent across the wage distribution. Exploring potential heterogeneity across macro‐regions and periods, we find no notable regional disparities except minor distinctions for the Southern regions, alongside a decline in the base‐wage premium over time and the emergence of a full‐wage penalty in recent years. A comparative analysis with a sample of men reveals that fathers enjoy a premium with both wage measures. Nevertheless, fatherhood is also associated with reduced extra remunerations, yet to a lesser extent than motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religiosity influences economic behavior in various domains, but what determines religiosity? Using data from the representative Socio‐Economic Panel Study for Germany (SOEP), this paper shows that religious activity increases after a family member's death. The life event's effect is larger after a partner's death when compared to a parent's death. Our results indicate that the influence of a family member's death on religious activity is temporary and are consistent with the religious coping hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, using data from the Afrobarometer surveys, examines the potential for smartphones to influence attitudes to intimate partner violence (IPV). Controlling for ownership of television and radio, we find that those living in areas with a higher incidence of smartphone ownership are more likely to state that it is never justifiable for a man to beat his wife. This is the case for both male and female respondents. We find that the strength of the association between regional smartphone proliferation and attitudes to IPV is similar for those who frequently get news from social media and those who get news from elsewhere. This suggests that our results are not driven entirely by personal social media use. Finally, we only find a statistically significant relationship for those who are socially conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of ultraviolet radiation (UV‐R) on state capacity. The results indicate that the intensity of UV‐R is a strong predictor of cross‐country differences in state capacity. Countries with a higher degree of UV‐R exposure tend on average to have weaker states. This finding remains unaffected after controlling for different variables that may be correlated with both UV‐R and state capacity, including an extensive set of geographical, historical and contemporary factors. The observed link between sunlight and state capacity is not driven by potential outliers and is robust to the employment of alternative measures of state capacity, estimation methods and other sensitivity checks. Furthermore, the analysis also reveals that the individualistic–collectivist dimension of culture acts as a transmission channel connecting UV‐R and state capacity. The estimates show that a lower degree of UV‐R exposure leads to the adoption of individualistic values, which in turn contribute to the development of state capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the existence of a hot hand and whether performing in front of a supportive audience creates a psychological pressure, which may impair performance. Using the task of free throwing in basketball competitions involving National Basketball Association (NBA) regular season and playoff games, I find strong evidence of a hot hand and a negative causal effect of the spectators on the probability of a successful shoot. The results support the hot hand fallacy and are in line with the hypothesis of choking under pressure when performing skill‐based tasks. Furthermore, contrary to what would be expected given the evidence in favor of a choking phenomenon, the effect of star players is insignificant. The hot hand effects for stars and non‐stars are the same in direction. Finally, efforts increase the performance, and the influence of hot hands and choking are not different between home and away shootings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the labor market effects of non‐pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to combat the COVID‐19 pandemic. We focus on the Nordic countries which showed one of the highest variations in NPIs despite having similar community spread of COVID‐19 at the onset of the pandemic: While Denmark, Finland and Norway imposed strict measures ('lockdowns'), Sweden decided for much lighter restrictions. Empirically, we use novel administrative data on weekly new unemployment and furlough spells from all 56 regions of the Nordic countries to compare the labor market outcomes of Sweden with the ones of its neighbors. Our evidence suggests that the labor markets of all countries were severely hit by the pandemic, although Sweden performed slightly better than its neighbors. Specifically, we find the worsening of the Swedish labor market to occur around 2 to 3 weeks later than in the other Nordic countries, and that its cumulative sum of new unemployment and furlough spells remained significantly lower (about 20–25%) during the time period of our study (up to week 21 of 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral interventions in general, and nudges in particular have become in recent years a popular (soft) regulatory instrument all around the world. Despite the excitement around this policy‐relevant field, some concerns have been raised. Nudges utilize behavioral biases in order to direct an individual's behavior. People, however, are usually not aware of the fact that such biases are used to influence their behavior. Making nudges transparent is important in democratic societies; yet, this might inhibit their effectiveness. Whether transparency inhibits the effect of a nudge was examined with respect to default nudges. However, this is the first paper to examine the effectiveness of transparent social norm nudges. Using an online experiment, we find that unlike with defaults, where transparency seems not to have inhibitive effects, disclosing the way social norms work and the purpose of using them diminishes the positive social norm effect. By means of heterogeneity analysis, we show that these results (the positive effect of the nudge and the inhibitive influence of transparency) hold only for male participants. Given the proliferation of nudges in public policies around the world, these results call for further research on nudges and transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of the paper provides a novel overview narrative of the historical evolution of PhD programmes in economics from 1880, drawing on multiple sources. The second part is empirical, and, also novel in terms of the data constructed. It attempts to bring the narrative up to date by looking at the cohorts of winners of the main young economist awards in economics in the US and Europe over the last twenty years or so and to chart at which universities they obtained their doctorates and undergraduate degrees. The total number of young (at the time of the award) economists so involved exceeds 350. The evolution of the American‐style PhD programme of today is traced to the emigration of European economists to the US from Nazi‐occupied Europe in the 1930s, and its subsequent spread first to Britain and then Continental Europe documented. What is new in the last twenty years or so is the emergence of many Top‐50 economics departments in Europe, with corresponding highly regarded PhD programmes. However, in relation to the recent elite young award‐winning economists the position in terms of PhD education of Harvard and MIT particularly remains largely unchallenged, in both the US and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper is the first to examine the impact of government‐firm collusion on firm tax avoidance in China by applying an instrumental variable approach. We take political turnover of local leaders as an external shock to the existing collusion and investigate firms' tax avoidance activities during local leadership transition. By using data on political turnover of prefectural leaders and listed firms from 2007 to 2014, we find that political turnover leads to the instability of existing collusion, and consequently a decrease in firm tax avoidance. This provides evidence of the pre‐existing collusion between government and firms. We then rule out the possibility that such change is driven by the effect of political uncertainty or tax competition by considering the heterogeneous effect of firms and cities. Finally, we show that firms' political connections, captured by political ties and ownership of firms, stabilize the existing collusion and help firms maintain their advantage while facing external political shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines the effect of extending the primary school day on maternal labor supply. I exploit the staggered nature of the recent German reform to extend school hours and assess whether or not gaining access to a full day school increases the likelihood that mothers enter into the labor market or extend their hours worked if already employed. I use the German Socio‐Economic Panel data set (GSOEP) and link it to a self‐collected school‐level data set with geographical information software (GIS). Using a flexible difference‐in‐difference approach in the estimation of linear probability and logit models, I find that the policy has a statistically significant effect of approximately five percentage points at the extensive margin, drawing more women into the labor market. I find no significant effect of the policy at the intensive margin; women who were already working do not extend their hours worked. This has implications for policies to extend the school day that do not correspond to the working day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper empirically studies the human capital effects of grammatical rules that permit speakers to drop a personal pronoun when used as a subject of a sentence. By de‐emphasizing the significance of the individual, such languages may perpetuate ancient values and norms that give primacy to the collective, inducing governments and families to invest relatively little in education because education usually increases the individual's independence from both the state and the family and may thus reduce the individual's commitment to these institutions. Carrying out both an individual‐level and a country‐level analysis, the paper indeed finds negative effects of pronoun‐drop languages. The individual‐level analysis uses data on 114,894 individuals from 75 countries over 1999‐2014. It establishes that speakers of such languages have a lower probability of having completed secondary or tertiary education, compared with speakers of languages that do not allow pronoun drop. The country‐level analysis uses data from 101 countries over 1972‐2012. Consistent with the individual‐level analysis, it finds that countries where the dominant languages permit pronoun drop have lower secondary school enrollment rates. In both cases, the magnitude of the effect is substantial, particularly among females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do freedom and social diversity affect individual preferences for revolutionary action? In this paper, we study the interplay between subjective freedom, defined as autonomy in decision‐making, and social diversity, measured through the extent of religious and/or ethno–linguistic fractionalization. Our paper is based on three hypotheses about the impact of the above two variables and their interaction on individual preferences for revolt. Our hypotheses are tested using a dataset containing information on about 44,000 individuals and covering 51 different countries during the 1990–2003 period. Our research suggests that people that define themselves as free individuals are less likely to support revolutionary actions, while the extent of fractionalization mildly affects such a probability. Interestingly, subjective freedom moderates the impact of diversity on the individual preferences for revolt if the extent of fractionalization is below a certain threshold. Instead, when above, subjective freedom enhances the impact of diversity on the taste for revolt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper investigates the intertwined relation among transparency, civic capital and political accountability in a large sample of Italian municipalities using a new indicator of institutional transparency. Firstly, we test the hypothesis that civic capital affects transparency of public administrations; secondly, we verify whether in municipalities where civic capital is high, citizens' attention toward government accountability is also high, making it politically unfeasible to disregard the demand for transparency. We find that civic capital positively affects transparency and the latter, in turn, is politically rewarding for the local administrators only conditional to the level of civic capital. Our findings are robust to different samples and endogeneity concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes optimal tax policy from the perspective of voters who want public policies to systematically advance their interests. Self‐acknowledged ignorance implies that voters have a practical interest in transparent and stable tax systems that allow personal tax burdens to be calculated accurately and easily. Such properties reduce voter mistakes. However, a voter's normative interests may conflict with these practical interests, because ideas about a good life or good society often support tax system complexity. Tradeoffs between these two aims of democratic tax systems imply that the optimal tax system for a democracy neither minimizes voter errors nor maximizes a social welfare function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide an estimate of the impact of money laundering on residential house market prices. The housing market is commonly exploited by criminal organizations to clean illegal profits. The increase in demand due to money laundering contrasts the negative externality of crime on house prices, which has been investigated by a large literature. We build a new dataset on residential house prices at the provincial level in Italy over the period 2005–2012, obtaining a sample of 672 observations. We then estimate a hedonic equilibrium price model, controlling for proxies both for illegal profits derived from "entrepreneurial" crimes (drug dealing, receiving stolen goods, prostitution) and for violent crimes (extortions), together with traditional market drivers. Adding to the evidence from the traditional literature, which remarks the negative impact of crime on house prices, our findings suggest that money laundering from "entrepreneurial" crimes creates an upward distortion in the housing market prices. The impact is stronger where retail markets for illicit trades are richer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the electoral effects of terrorism by examining a rich panel dataset on the South Tyrolean case. A Northern and predominantly German‐speaking region of Italy, South Tyrol was the theater of a long war of attrition fought between the majority language group and the Italian state for autonomy and independence. Using detailed information on the whole record of 337 terrorist attacks occurring between 1956 and 1991, I find that (i) low‐scale terror or attacks which targeted police forces negatively affected incumbent support; (ii) high‐scale terror or attacks which targeted civilians or caused deaths were conducive of rally‐round‐the‐Italian‐flag momenta; (iii) support to terrorists sensibly drops after deadly attacks. These findings highlight the role of terror intensity and violence in driving the impact of terrorism on incumbent actors and terrorist organizations and help reconcile the coexistence of seemingly contradictory effects of terrorism documented in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY This paper exploits the presence of Congressional experience in US governors that permits the identification of the relationship between political career experience and intergovernmental transfers. I assemble a novel dataset of governors' political background and match this to federal transfer data from 1950 to 2008. Governors with Congressional experience have 0.8 percentage points more transfers to their state. I show evidence for one potential channel that this may act through, the federal grants system. The findings are robust to outliers in the data, selection effects, close elections and an alternative dependent variable based on a state's share of total federal transfers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Public support for global development in rich countries is critical for sustaining effective government and individual action. But the causes of public support are not well understood. Does spending time living in a developing country play a role in generating individual commitment to development? Addressing this question is fraught with selection bias, as individuals are rarely exogenously assigned to spend time in different countries. In this paper I address this question using a natural experiment – the quasi‐random assignment of missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints to two‐year missions in different world regions. I provide the first causal estimates of the effect of travel to a developing country on attitudes to global development. Data comes from a new survey gathered through mission alumni Facebook groups. Missionaries assigned to low‐income and middle‐income world regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Caribbean) have similar prior characteristics to those assigned to high‐income Europe. Those assigned to Africa self‐report greater interest in global development and greater charitable attitudes and behaviours. However, they also express stronger opposition to immigration from poor countries, and are less likely to be involved in political campaigns to address global development. Spending time in lower income countries may lead to greater support for charity but less support for political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY This paper studies the effect of the Swiss federal debt containment rule on public debt. Using the synthetic control method, we provide evidence that the introduction of the federal rule in 2003 has reduced public debt ratio in Switzerland by 2.5 percentage points on average until 2010. By exploiting possible mechanisms, we find no evidence that the reduction in debt ratio was driven by a debt relocation to sub‐government levels or cutbacks in investment expenditure. On one hand, we argue that the positive impact of the fiscal rule is based on its design features, namely its precise but cyclically adjusted target, the comprehensive scope to prevent budget loopholes, and the strict sanction mechanism. On the other hand, we also discuss the generalizability of our findings to other countries and contend that its direct democratic authorization has contributed to its political enforcement and viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]