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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. (JEL 040, O50, Z10), I. INTRODUCTION It is a widely held view among economists that a deep financial system is beneficial for growth in the long run. A key issue, however, remains unresolved: why [...]

The USA has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and a wide spatial variation can be seen in its spread and mortality. This raises the question of why some regions are more resilient to the pandemic than others? We hypothesize that the individualism–collectivism cleavage explains the disparity in COVID-19 cases observed across sub-national units in the USA. Cultural disparity among different groups of people leads to differences in how they perceive health crises and thereby shapes the way they respond to pandemics. A heightened sense of obligation and responsibility increases in-group sociability and interdependence and raises the perceived vulnerability towards disease transmission among collectivistic individuals, and this leads to greater adherence to containment measures and social distancing rules. Our results provide evidence that more individualistic states tend to have more COVID-19 cases across the USA. [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, 044, Q54, Q58), I. INTRODUCTION Climate change has severe impacts on developing countries, affecting physical systems (rivers, lakes, floods, droughts, coastal erosion, and sea-level effects), biological systems (terrestrial and marine ecosystems), and human [...]

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 [...]

ARRAY(0x55d2f27ee100) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Higher exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UV‐R) is associated with greater prevalence of eye disease such as cataracts. We hypothesize that the variation in the intensity of UV‐R can help explain the differences in institutional quality observed across countries. The long‐term incentive and ability to improve the quality of institutions decline when the probability of blindness increases. Our reduced‐form cross‐country results support this hypothesis. We then propose that the mechanism works from the impact of UV‐R on the prevalence of eye disease, which in turn shapes institutions. Our empirical evidence lends considerable support to this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideas production function is at the heart of endogenous growth theory. Using data for Europe, its offshoots, and the Asian Tiger economies over the period from 1870 to 2010, this paper provides direct estimates of an ideas production function that explicitly distinguishes between the first- and second-generation endogenous growth models while allowing for human capital and international knowledge spillovers through various channels. The estimates show strong intertemporal and cross-country knowledge spillovers, provide robust support for Schumpeterian growth theory, and suggest that human capital and some channels of international knowledge spillover are influential for ideas production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]