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This study proposes that countries with a cultural orientation toward individualism tend to enjoy a higher level of financial development. Estimates based on cross‐country data lend strong support to this hypothesis. Specifically, the results indicate that existing disparity in the level of financial development is significantly correlated with variation in the extent of individualism across countries, where a one standard deviation increase in individualism is associated with 0.631 standard deviations improvement in the level of financial development. The results are robust to a number of considerations. Additional results provide some support to the notion that individualistic culture and legal origin may serve as complements rather than substitutes to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how the implementation of modern climate change policies is related to former colonies' length of state history and their legal heritage. We argue that countries with longer statehood experience around the time of colonization were better equipped to implement the legal philosophies transplanted by their colonial powers. Therefore, the implications of receiving British common law versus French civil law should be particularly important in countries with a greater accumulated history of statehood. Using a cross-section of up to 78 former colonies, our results provide support for this hypothesis. In particular, our estimates demonstrate that common law countries have weaker modern climate change policies than civil law countries and the difference is inflated by a longer statehood experience, measured by the length of state history from 1 to 1800 AD. Legal origin has no effect in areas which, by the time of colonization, had no statehood experience. Finally, we report similar results for the pattern of labor market regulations. ( JEL K15, K31, K32, O44, Q54, Q58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests Jared Diamond's influential theory that an earlier transition from a hunter-gatherer society to agricultural production induces higher levels of technology adoption. Using a proxy for the geographic diffusion barriers of Neolithic technology and an index of biogeographic endowments to isolate the exogenous component of the timing of agricultural transition, the findings indicate that countries that experienced earlier transitions to agriculture were subsequently more capable of adopting new technologies in 1000 BC, 1 AD, and 1500 AD. These results lend strong support to Diamond's hypothesis. ( JEL O30, O40) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]