Kyklos最新文献

When governments invest millions in climate-resilient power grids, an unexpected consequence emerges: Energy bills soar so high that vulnerable families can no longer afford basic electricity. This study investigates how extreme climate risks influence household energy poverty through multiple transmission channels using comprehensive panel data linking household energy consumption patterns with detailed climate indicators. We find that extreme climate risks significantly exacerbate household energy poverty, creating what we term “adaptive inequality” where climate protection becomes a luxury good. The analysis reveals distinct transmission pathways: Infrastructure disruption increases system failure rates, while temperature extremes drive energy price volatility that disproportionately burdens low-income households. Heterogeneity analysis shows that families in regions with incomplete energy infrastructure, high natural disaster vulnerability, and limited economic resources face particularly severe impacts. Our findings demonstrate that climate adaptation creates “selective vulnerability” where identical policies simultaneously protect wealthy households while pushing poor ones into energy deprivation. These results challenge current policy frameworks that focus on building resilient systems while ignoring distributional consequences, suggesting the need for frameworks ensuring resilience does not become another form of social exclusion.

Does the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom Index (EFI) constitute, as its proponents claim, a coherent measure of a classically liberal approach to economic governance? Noting the central role of individualism to liberalism, we provide evidence on this claim by investigating the empirical relationship between individualism and the EFI. Our findings suggest that there is a strong, positive relationship between individualism and the EFI. This relationship is robust to the use of alternative measures of individualism, to controls for a wide range of historical, cultural and institutional variables, and to the use of instrumental variable methods to address measurement and endogeneity issues. We also find evidence of a strong positive, causal relationship between individualism and four of the five components of the EFI. While these findings broadly support the claim that the EFI provides a measure of a classically liberal approach to economic governance, they also present challenges the empirical literature on the EFI. In particular, it is unclear whether liberal economic policies or the individualist values that underlie these policies are responsible for the positive relationship between the EFI and measures of social welfare.

The article investigates the influence of institutional frameworks on spatial development patterns in the preindustrial world, exploring how the degree of urban concentration may determine whether societies experienced urbanization ‘with’ or ‘without’ growth. We hypothesize that the emergence of centralized/extractive institutions in the capital city, which tend to siphon resources from hinterland cities, results in artificially inflated urbanization levels despite congestion problems and economic stagnation. In contrast, decentralized/inclusive institutions, fostering a balanced and autonomous urbanization process, are associated with economic growth. We conduct a historical and empirical analysis of the Republic of Genoa from 1400 to 1800. Our findings suggest that extractive and centralized institutions in the capital city of Genoa led to centralized and congested urban growth, restricting the autonomy and expansion of peripheral cities and negatively impacting the Republic's overall economic development, at least until new policies were enacted in the eighteenth century. Consequently, the emergence of more inclusive institutions fostered the development of peripheral cities, resulting in urbanization that was more balanced and coupled with economic growth. This pattern shows that urbanization is virtuous when decoupled from urban concentration, whereas their simultaneous increase reflects economic stagnation, integrating both urbanization ‘with’ and ‘without’ growth into a unified framework.

When decentralized governments share the public budget, distributive policies are needed to allocate public goods and services among them. To date, however, both the theoretical and empirical literature has largely examined the effect of political orientation on the quantity of transfers received, without considering how efficiently they are managed. This article aims to fill this gap by linking the literature on political alignment and transfers with work on public sector efficiency. Specifically, we examine how bureaucratic input choices might be related to political orientation and political sign and how political coordination between local and higher levels of government could lead to inefficiencies due to clientelism, corrupt practices, or lack of transparency. Our results suggest that political alignment between local governments and higher level governments may lead to a decrease in public sector efficiency, which is detrimental to distributive policies.

This paper examines how specific characteristics of the business environment, namely, procedural delays, exposure to bribery, and the presence of informal competitors, affect the incorporation decisions of firms in Bangladesh. Drawing on three rounds of data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, the analysis employs instrumental variable regressions, using group-level cell averages constructed by region, industry, and firm size to address endogeneity concerns. The findings reveal that longer waiting times for permits and greater management time spent on regulatory compliance significantly reduce the likelihood of incorporation. In contrast, firms experiencing higher bribery costs and more frequent solicitation of bribe payments are more likely to incorporate. In addition, competition from informal firms reduces the probability of incorporation.