Journal of Comparative Economics最新文献

This paper examines the effect of absolute-relative framing on contributions to a public good. Group members have high and low endowments and the number of high-income members in each group varies between treatments. They make contributions without and with a minimum contribution level. We express the contribution metric either in absolute amount or as a relative proportion of a member's initial endowment. We propose that these institutional designs affect contribution behavior through shifting reference points in decisions. First, as the number of high-type members increases, the average contribution increases, especially among the low-type members in absolute framing. Second, relative framing makes the contribution proportions between high and low types move closer than in absolute framing. Third, the difference in contributions between absolute and relative conditions mostly disappears when the minimum contribution level is introduced. We show that the effects of group members’ endowments, relative framing, and the MCL policy represent the internal, external and the institutional reference point respectively with increasing strength.

Elites’ resentment and populist sentiments have been growing in recent years. This research argues that one reason for this is growing income inequality and limited intergenerational mobility, particularly associated with persistent inequality in social status. The presented model uses mechanisms of accordance of social status to generate inequality persistence which, in turn, generates divergence in preferred policies between poor masses and rich elites. This induces the poor majority to mistrust the informed policy making by the elites and to make own, less well informed policy choices. The model generates insights that are consistent with documented empirical regularities. Additionally, our framework enables exploring mechanisms that can potentially empower the poor thereby alleviating resentment against the elites.

This paper examines the relationship between growing up amid armed conflict and acceptance of violent behavior later in life. With this aim, we match data from 48 Demographic and Health Surveys in 23 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with records of all conflict events in the region post-WWII. Our empirical strategy exploits within-country variation in conflict exposure across survey clusters and over birth years. We find that attitudes toward domestic violence vary with past exposure to a high-intensity conflict (war) during childhood, but the estimated association is small in magnitude. Estimates from a model with survey cluster fixed effects show that acceptance of domestic violence by women exposed to war before age 20 is about three percent of a standard deviation higher than acceptance by women who live in the same community and experience a war later in life or were born after the war ended. The association is the largest for women first exposed to war early in childhood but remains small (five percent of a standard deviation).

Over 150 countries have laws allowing expatriate citizens to vote in their country of origin. Yet, little is known about their voting behavior and how this is affected by their host countries. Using unique micro-data on Chilean expatriates living in Europe and exploiting increases in the cost of voting caused by rainfall during the 2014 European Parliament election day in districts where Chileans reside, we show that 1 percentage point increase in the host-country local turnout decreases expatriates’ electoral participation in their home-country elections by nearly 1 percentage point. The result is driven by expatriates who were better integrated in the host-country societies. Evidence from surveys shows that higher host turnout promotes expatriates’ participation in host-country organizations and less in home-country organizations. Overall, our results suggest that in communities with high-political participation, migrants engage more with the local politics at the expense of their home-country politics.

This paper empirically investigates the interplay between de jure political institutions and de facto elite-versus-citizen political power in determining the likelihood of the adoption of pro-citizen or aggregate welfare-enhancing economic institutions. Our key innovation is to measure the elite vs. citizens’ de facto power by the stock of land reforms that have taken place up to a given year in a country during the period 1900 to 2010. Our empirical analysis documents that, controlling for permanent country differences, common time shocks and country-specific time trends, and addressing the biases owing to initial differences in land distribution and time-varying omitted variables, democratization correlates with a relatively more likely movement towards aggregate welfare-maximizing policies in countries where adequate citizen power has been built (elite power has been adequately destroyed) over time. In addition, each land reform, which is an incremental destruction of the elite power, is associated with a relatively more likely movement towards aggregate welfare-enhancing policies in countries under democratic regimes, compared to autocracies.

This study examines the impact of risk-sharing on entrepreneurship-driven innovation in an occupational choice model, where entrepreneurs exert effort to innovate. Risk-sharing may increase the number of individuals who become entrepreneurs by limiting the downside risk. The effort of entrepreneurs may, however, be hampered by high risk-sharing if this limits the returns faced by successful entrepreneurs relative to unsuccessful entrepreneurs. We construct a simple theoretical model where risk-sharing may be either private or provided through the welfare state by means of taxation. We show that, in addition to the occupational and effort choice dimensions, the level of public risk-sharing also matters for the characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Conservative Talk Radio continues to shape US politics in the 21st century, but it has a deeper history. Using newly digitized archival records, we provide new evidence on the electoral effects of Conservative Talk Radio in the historically consequential period from 1950 to 1970. Conservative radio hosts like Clarence Manion, Billy James Hargis, and Carl McIntire rapidly expanded their network during the early 1960s before the Kennedy administration took regulatory steps to dismantle their business model. We find that in counties where these shows aired on local stations, the Republican vote share increased following their introduction. Anticipatory effects are small and insignificant, which supports a causal interpretation of this effect.

This study examines the impact of historical disease burden on the development of contemporary China. Using historical records spanning nearly six centuries, we construct a county-level dataset for the distribution of epidemics in China. Our results indicate that historical disease pressure has a positive impact on long-term economic development. This positive association withstands rigorous testing through a series of robustness checks. Furthermore, we find that earlier institutional development in disease control and the improvement in human capital are effective channels. The establishment of disease prevention centers facilitated the early adoption of modern disease control systems, which, in turn, enhanced public health, education, and productive activities.

Are Chinese government subsidies making the targeted Chinese firms more productive? Alternatively, are efforts to promote productivity undercut by efforts to maintain or expand employment in less productive enterprises? In this paper, we attempt to shed light on these questions through the analysis of previously underutilized microdata on direct government subsidies provided to China's publicly traded firms. We estimate total-factor productivity (TFP) for Chinese listed firms and investigate the relationship between these estimates of TFP and the allocation of government subsidies. We find little evidence that the Chinese government consistently “picks winners”. Firms’ ex-ante productivity is negatively correlated with subsidies received by firms, and subsidies appear to have a negative impact on firms’ ex-post productivity growth throughout our data window, 2007 – 2018. Neither subsidies given out under the name of R&D and innovation promotion nor industrial and equipment upgrading positively affect firms’ productivity growth. On the other hand, we find a positive impact of subsidy on current year employment. These findings suggest that China's rising wave of government subsidies may have generated limited effects in promoting productivity.

This study examines the short- and medium-term impacts of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the labor market for Ukrainian workers. Using a unique dataset of 5.4 million online job advertisements for Ukrainian job seekers in Poland and Ukraine over the 2021–2022 period, we show a short-term surge in demand for Ukrainians to work in Poland, while the number of jobs available in Ukraine is relatively stable. Since February 2022, the demand for soft and analytical skills in Ukraine has increased, while the demand for such skills in Poland has remained the same. Moreover, the increase in Polish jobs available to Ukrainian workers is largest for medium/high-skilled jobs and female-oriented jobs. Further analysis suggests a persistent shift (to the left) in wage distribution driven by both the decline of wages within job titles and the change in the composition of jobs across Poland.