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Beneficial influence of female representation in implementing environment-friendly policies have been documented in recent studies. However, presence of factors such as corruption and bureaucratic red tapes, known to hinder development initiatives, raises question about whether women legislators can achieve the desired level of success with environmental policies. Based on our empirical analysis using cross-sectional data for 83 countries, we find evidence that the positive impact of women in parliament on climate change policy outcomes is significant and most effective for countries with low levels of corruption. Depending on the model specification used, ranging from instrumental variable regressions to inclusion of controls to mitigate omitted variable bias, and matching models, we do find that the beneficial impact of women in parliament becomes insignificant and eventually might become negative with rising corruption. Thus, while women might be able to successfully propose a bill for and turn-into-law, environment-friendly policies in countries with low levels of corruption, the effort is nullified and might be reversed in case of countries with high corruption. We illustrate that the results are sensitive to model selection, and choice of controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social trust has a complex interrelationship with attitudes toward gender equality. Social trust has its origins in exchange relationships in preindustrial societies, lowering uncertainty in transactions and easing interpersonal exchanges. The degree to which this trust was extended to opportunities for women in commercial and societal roles, however, differed across cultures. Prior literature finds attitudes toward individualism and collectivism have significant implications for gender equality and patriarchal attitudes. We combine these ideas arguing that the degree to which social trust fosters gender equality depends upon the degrees of individualism and collectivism. Employing World Values Survey data across countries over time, we find that with low levels of individualism, and high degrees of collectivism, higher levels of trust are not effective in reducing the prevalence of gendered patriarchal attitudes—in fact it entrenches them further, worsening gender equality. However, as individualism rises, and collectivism falls, higher levels of trust become effective in reducing the prevalence of patriarchal beliefs. Thus, collectivistic beliefs stand as a barrier to future improvements in women's equality and economic rights in many societies; preventing social trust from being extended beyond traditional gendered roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial strand of literature unambiguously established the importance of financial development for economic growth. Relatively less attention has been paid to the impact that financial development of a country can have on important development outcomes like transparency. As established by existing research, strong financial institutions in a country would imply an improved and transparent banking system, better corporate governance, ease of accessing credit, greater availability of information and best practices in investment protection. All these should theoretically promise a more transparent economic system. Our empirical findings confirm this. Using several estimation strategies, our results confirm that greater financial development enhances transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current literature contains mixed results regarding the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship and economic growth. In this paper, we examine a much larger set of countries and time periods to attempt to gain insights into this relationship. In particular, the central question is whether corruption can compensate for a bad business climate. Our results are clear; corruption hurts entrepreneurship. The impact is smaller, but remains negative, when business climates are bad. This is in contrast to previous literature that suggests corruption may increase entrepreneurship under a bad business climate. We find corruption never improves entrepreneurship; it simply hurts less when business climates are not conducive to growth in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically assesses the relationship between culture and a free press. The results reveal that a privatized or 'free media' strongly influences informal institutions of a country or what is commonly known as culture. By providing unbiased and a wide variety information to the masses, the media sector not only reduces information asymmetry and transaction costs but also helps generate higher levels of social capital. It acts as an effective liaison between the masses and the government and also among various religious, ethnic and other fractionalized groups in a society. We use the proxy of informal institutions identified by Tabellini (Journal of the European Economic Association 8(4):677-716, ) which consists of four traits. The results are robust to alternate specifications and inclusion of controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the economic development literature, cultural diversity (for example, ethnolinguistic fractionalization) has been shown to have a negative impact on economic outcomes in many underdeveloped countries. We hypothesize that the impact of diversity on economic performance depends on the quality of a country's institutions. Under bad institutions diversity leads to conflict and expropriation, while under good institutions diversity leads to economic progress. A culturally diverse society or interaction among different cultures encourages exchange of, and competition between ideas and different world views. Under good institutions, this amalgamation of ideas and views leads to greater entrepreneurial initiatives. We show that higher levels of cultural diversity increase the rate of entrepreneurship in the presence of good institutions using evidence from the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy occupies a unique place at the intersection of economics and political science, being an essential part of both disciplines, as well as an area that offers special insight into issues of continuing importance in public finance and policy. This article uses journal publications to rank institutions by research productivity in political economy. An incidental byproduct is a ranking of individual scholars. Ranking methodology is developed based on the established literature. Implications for the future evolution of political economy as an interdisciplinary field are suggested and discussed.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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