Journal of Comparative Economics最新文献

A growing literature connects labor market hardships to stronger preferences for government welfare and redistribution programs. Potential preference shifts with respect to other types of state involvement in the economy, however, have gone unexplored. We draw on both longitudinal and pseudo-panel data from Russia to explore how labor market hardships relate to preferences for public sector employment and employers. In fixed effects specifications, we demonstrate that recent feelings of job insecurity, experiences with wage arrears, and spells of unemployment all increase the attractiveness of work in the public sector. Pseudo-panel data provide evidence that labor market hardships, particularly when experienced at times of economic crisis and social upheaval, can shape preferences over the longer run.

This paper presents evidence from parallel field experiments in China, Germany, and the United States. We contacted the mayor's office in over 6,000 cities asking for information about starting a new business. Chinese and German cities responded to 36–37 percent of requests while American cities responded only to 22 percent of requests. American and German cities were more responsive to requests from citizens than foreigners; Chinese cities were more responsive to requests from men than women. Chinese cities were more responsive to requests about starting a construction than a green business, and when the mayor was up for promotion. These results shed light on bureaucratic responsiveness in autocracies and democracies and for top-down versus bottom-up policy making.

In all available cross-sectional data, the trajectory of the observed wage–experience profile of Russian workers is flat, peaks early, and declines sharply afterwards. This shape looks puzzling since it differs starkly from that observed in both developed and developing countries. We show that a proper interpretation of the wage–experience profile is hindered by the age-period-cohort problem, when the effects of time, cohort, and experience on the wage growth are mixed. Our study uses survey data from Russia covering the years 2000–2019. Relying on human capital theory, we disentangle the experience, period and cohort effects. With certain assumptions concerning human capital depreciation due to aging, our results show that Russian wages do grow monotonically with experience. However, this growth after mid-career is offset by the cohort effect that proceeds in the opposite direction, thus reflecting massive obsolescence of the human capital of workers from older cohorts. Meanwhile, the time effect mirrors the general GDP path as well as all booms and busts over the period.

We examine the short- and long-run effects of historical Protestant churches on human capital and female empowerment in South Korea by combining historical data on religious facilities and contemporary population census and social survey data. In the short run, we find a positive and significant effect of Protestant churches on women’s literacy and employment, but not on men’s. After almost a century, we find no strong relationship between historical Protestant churches and women’s educational attainment or economic and political empowerment.

The rise of modern states is an important factor for economic development. We test the effects of territorial consolidation and the increase in legal capacity on market integration. The political transformation of Germany in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, which reduced territorial fragmentation and transformed former semi-autonomous estates to sovereign polities, serves as a natural experiment. We apply a difference-in-differences framework to a new dataset of grain prices and show that territorial consolidation reduced trade costs conditional on trade reforms that replaced heterogenous internal duties by a unified system of external tariffs. The effect was equivalent to a reduction of price gaps by 31 percent. Cities that were part of Prussia both before and after the Wars and experienced trade reform saw a reduction in price gaps of similar magnitude. By contrast, there was no market integration in late-reformer states such as Hanover and Saxony. Trade reforms were the main channel through which territorial consolidation fostered market integration.

We implement a field experiment in Romania to elucidate how informational nudges and goal setting impact saving. We find no evidence that text message reminders, either in the form of a general reminder or information about the saving goals of peers, encourage saving. Further, both types of messages discourage saving for participants who set a goal, particularly among high goal setters. We posit that informational nudges unintentionally increase the salience of unrealistic goals and engender boomerang effects that discourage high goal setters from saving. Among participants who received no messages, those who set goals save more, suggesting a tradeoff between commitment devices and informational nudges in this context.

Populism is on the rise, and democratic rights are deteriorating in many countries as a result of authoritarian policies adopted by populist leaders. This study analyzes how rising political populism in developing countries affects whether their citizens pursue higher education abroad. Applying the Synthetic Control Method, student migration patterns from Hungary, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Indonesia are explored as cases constituting early examples of authoritarian populism. The estimates show that the rise of authoritarianism after the closely contested elections that result in favor of the populist leaders in these countries increases the number of citizens who attend universities in foreign countries. Finding limited evidence for worsening higher education options in the origin countries suggests that more students start pursuing foreign education to increase their chances of living abroad after graduation. Emigration of skilled citizens from developing countries as a consequence of political populism is likely to constitute a threat to the economic performance of these countries in the long-term.

Political instability is a major obstacle to firms' investment and development. This article investigates how elections affect the perception of political instability of African firms. We use a survey-based dataset of approximately 21,500 firms in 33 African countries which we cross with 237 elections between 2004 and 2020. Our econometric strategy allows a detailed identification of election periods and the associated effects. We provide robust evidence of a pre-election increase in the perception of political instability by firms, but no, or limited post-election effects. The perception of political instability by firms is stronger for firms oriented towards foreign markets, in countries with non-democratic institutions or a high risk of conflict.

We explore how cultural traits coherent with liberal institutions affect economic performance. The matching between cultural traits and institutions is what we refer to as cultural-institutional coherence. We study how cultural-institutional coherence influenced the paths followed by Spanish regions after Spain's liberal reforms in the 19th century. We argue that these liberal reforms brought important changes to Spain's institutions and contributed to inducing a major rearrangement in the distribution of economic development across the country's regions. This process favored regions with cultural traits that were more coherent with liberal institutions. We address endogeneity issues using the disparate political paths that the regions followed in their distant pasts. We characterize political paths in terms of Municipal autonomy in the Middle Ages, as well as Constraints on the executive in the early modern period which, we argue, are good instruments for these cultural traits.

Ramadan has attracted negative publicity and criticism in Western countries with large Muslim immigrant populations. Are these attitudes justified? Does the behavior of Muslim immigrants negatively affect host populations during this period? This paper investigates one important dimension of immigrant behavior that is a source of concern: criminal activity. Using the universe of criminal offenses registered by the Swiss police authorities, the paper documents that during Ramadan, crimes committed by Muslim migrants decline by 11%. The mechanism behind this reduction most consistent with the empirical results, is one of changes in beliefs and values of immigrants. Other explanations, such as time spent on community events and declining physical ability play only a minor role.