1,721,187 research outputs found
Consensual and Conflictual Democratization
No full textThis paper studies the interactions between democratization and the emergence of rule of law. We propose a model in which heterogeneous individuals can make costly investments to protect their income against expropriation. The public enforcement of property rights is chosen by the enfranchised population whose composition depends on the political regime in place. We characterize the politico-economic equilibria in terms of property rights protection and political regime, and study the role of the different scenarios of democratization. The results suggest: (i) unequal control of natural resources is a central structural determinant of the democratization scenario; (ii) democratic transitions under conflict may lead to failed democracies with poor rule of law; (iii) that democratic transitions supported by a large consensus may serve as a coordination device thereby leading to better protection of property rights and more stable polities
Hobbes to Rousseau: Inequality, Institutions and Development
No full textThis article studies the endogenous evolution of economic and political institutions and the interdependencies with the process of economic development. Favourable economic institutions in the form of a state of law and absence of societal conflict arise in equilibrium. Democracies are neither necessary nor sufficient to implement a state of law, even if they may be instrumental. Efficient oligarchies can emerge and persist supported by the consensus of all groups. A taxonomy of politicoeconomic equilibria shows the endogenous evolution of institutions depending on economic inequality and natural resource abundance, implying a non-monotonic relationship between inequality and institutional quality
The timing of the demographic transition and economic growth
No full textThis research provides novel evidence that the time since the onset of the demographic transition affects growth dynamics across countries and within countries. This sheds light on a factor that has been neglected in the existing empirical growth literature
Human capital formation, life expectancy, and the process of Development
No full textFrom the second half of the eighteenth cen-tury onward, the Western world experienced unprecedented changes in the economic envi-ronment and in virtually all other aspects of human life. After continued stagnant develop-ment, aggregate and per capita incomes entered a path of rapid and sustained growth (as de-picted in Figure 1A). At the same time, living conditions also changed radically. Mortality fell and average life expectancy at birth as well as at later ages, which had virtually been unchanged for millennia, increased significantly within just a few generations (see Figure 1B). Simulta-neously, the traditional social environment changed profoundly, as the vast majority of the population became educated. Literacy, which used to be the privilege of a small elite, became widespread among the population (as is illus-trated in Figure 1C by the population share able to sign documents). While almost all skills were acquired through apprenticeships before the In-dustrial Revolution, formal schooling represents the main channel of human capital formation afterward.1 Furthermore, the size of the popula-tion increased substantially (Figure 1D).2 This increase seems to have been driven mainly by increased longevity, rather than changed fertility behavior.3 While GDP kept growing unboundedly after the transition, the growth in life expectancy and population eventually attenuated. This paper provides a theory explaining this transition in income, life expectancy, education, and population size as the endogenous outcome of a gradual process of development. Earlier contri-butions to the literature have concentrated on the existence of multiple steady-state equilibria and have explained the transition from a stagnant re-gime to an environment of sustained growth by scale effects, exogenous technological change, or shocks that move the dynamic system from on
Medication against conflict
Full text linkAdverse health conditions and social conflict constitute major impediments for developing countries. The potential for reducing social conflict by successful public health interventions is largely unknown. This paper closes this gap by evaluating the effect of a major health intervention-the successful expansion of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. Combining exogenous time variation in access to ART with cross-sectional variation in the scope for treatment for identification, we find that the ART expansion significantly reduced the number of violent events in African countries and sub -national regions. The effect pertains to social conflict, not civil war. The evidence also shows that the effect is related to health improvements, greater approval of government policy, and increased trust in political institutions. Results of a counterfactual simulation reveal that the ART expansion reduced the number of social conflict events by about 10%
Heterogeneity in Rent-Seeking Contests with Multiple Stages: Theory and Experimental Evidence
Full text linkWe investigate how heterogeneity in contestants’ investment costs affects competition expenditures in a dynamic elimination contest with different seeding variants of contestants. Theory predicts that expenditures in dynamic contests are lower when competitors are heterogeneous than when they are homogeneous. Cost heterogeneity influences expenditures directly – by inducing weak and strong competitors to reduce their expenditures – and indirectly – through their influence on continuation values. We present evidence from lab experiments that is qualitatively in line with the theoretical prediction for contestants with low investment costs: they incorporate the heterogeneity and the differences in continuation values when competing in stage one and they decrease their expenditures when competing against a weak agent in stage two. For high-cost contestants, the theoretical predictions are not confirmed: expenditures in heterogeneous interactions are not lower and sometimes even higher. As a consequence, we find that total expenditures in heterogeneous dynamic contests are not necessarily lower than in homogeneous one
Growth and Endogenous Political Institutions
No full textIn this paper we study the dynamics of political institutions and
the different public policies they imply. While political institutions
are influenced by economic development, they are in turn a key determinant of the development process. In particular, democratic institutions implement different public policies than oligarchies, and
therefore imply different economic outcomes. Economic development
in turn increases the likelihood of transitions from oligarchy
to democracy because it changes the relative costs for and benefits
from the public policies arising under democratic regimes. We show
that different scenarios of political development can arise endogenously: democratic transitions under the shadow of social conflict and democratic transitions initiated by the oligarchic elite. Moreover, we show that democratic regimes tend to provide more efficient public policies, and more redistribution than oligarchic regimes. The results are compared to historical and empirical evidence, and the consequences of the simplifying assumptions are discussed in detail
Human capital and the diffusion of technology
No full textThis research provides novel evidence that human capital affects the diffusion of technologies across countries. More human capital is associated with shorter adoption lags and greater intensity of use of new technologies, providing a link between education and economic backwardness.(c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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