Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-05DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107266
Daniel Kammer , Alina Greiner-Filsinger
In this paper, we explore how mass violence shapes attitudes on violence against children, and we examine how these attitudes are transmitted across generations in the context of the Rwandan genocide. We exploit spatial variation in genocide intensity from the Gacaca records and temporal variation in women’s timing of socialization from three rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in a difference-in-differences framework and find that younger women from regions more affected by genocide hold less violent attitudes compared to their peers from less-affected regions. Using an instrumental variable approach to estimate the transmission effect, we also show that descendants of these younger women from regions more affected by genocide are similarly less likely to develop violent attitudes. We provide evidence that genocide-induced women’s empowerment is the underlying mechanism. As such, our findings underscore previous evidence on the conflict–prosociality link by showing that mass violence can catalyze progressive norm change across generations, but also call for a more detailed investigation of the underlying adaptation mechanisms of the second generation.
{"title":"Genocide, women’s empowerment, and intergenerational transmission of violent attitudes","authors":"Daniel Kammer , Alina Greiner-Filsinger","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107266","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107266","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we explore how mass violence shapes attitudes on violence against children, and we examine how these attitudes are transmitted across generations in the context of the Rwandan genocide. We exploit spatial variation in genocide intensity from the <em>Gacaca</em> records and temporal variation in women’s timing of socialization from three rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in a difference-in-differences framework and find that younger women from regions more affected by genocide hold less violent attitudes compared to their peers from less-affected regions. Using an instrumental variable approach to estimate the transmission effect, we also show that descendants of these younger women from regions more affected by genocide are similarly less likely to develop violent attitudes. We provide evidence that genocide-induced women’s empowerment is the underlying mechanism. As such, our findings underscore previous evidence on the conflict–prosociality link by showing that mass violence can catalyze progressive norm change across generations, but also call for a more detailed investigation of the underlying adaptation mechanisms of the second generation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107266"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145685711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-05DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107264
Dawoon Jung
How economic agents’ preferences—such as individual time preferences, risk preferences, and prosocial preferences—are formed is a central question in economics, with important implications for understanding decision-making behavior. This study examines the nonlinear effect of conflict exposure on prosocial preferences, measured using “tax game” survey questions from the 2008 Aceh Reintegration and Livelihood Survey (ARLS). Leveraging variation in individual conflict exposure during one of the longest-lasting conflicts in recent history in Aceh, Indonesia, the analysis reveals a nonlinear relationship between conflict intensity and individuals’ willingness to contribute to public goods. Specifically, contributions decrease as conflict exposure intensifies up to a certain threshold, beyond which contributions increase. These findings are robust to alternative measures of conflict exposure and the inclusion of relevant control variables, providing consistent evidence of the nonlinear association.
{"title":"Conflicts and prosocial preferences","authors":"Dawoon Jung","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107264","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107264","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How economic agents’ preferences—such as individual time preferences, risk preferences, and prosocial preferences—are formed is a central question in economics, with important implications for understanding decision-making behavior. This study examines the nonlinear effect of conflict exposure on prosocial preferences, measured using “tax game” survey questions from the 2008 Aceh Reintegration and Livelihood Survey (ARLS). Leveraging variation in individual conflict exposure during one of the longest-lasting conflicts in recent history in Aceh, Indonesia, the analysis reveals a nonlinear relationship between conflict intensity and individuals’ willingness to contribute to public goods. Specifically, contributions decrease as conflict exposure intensifies up to a certain threshold, beyond which contributions increase. These findings are robust to alternative measures of conflict exposure and the inclusion of relevant control variables, providing consistent evidence of the nonlinear association.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107264"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145665508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-23DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107304
Kwamivi Mawuli Gomado , Isaac Amedanou
This paper examines the dynamic effects of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) reforms and Network Sector reforms on unemployment in selected African countries from 1990 to 2014. Reforms refer to changes in the EPL or Network Sector institutions index. Using local projections combined with augmented inverse probability weighting (LP–AIPW) and Entropy Balancing techniques to address endogeneity concerns, our findings show that EPL reforms reduce unemployment from the first year after their implementation, while Network Sector reforms also lower unemployment, with significant effects emerging from the second year onward. Robustness checks confirm that these results are consistent across alternative specifications, different definitions of reform episodes, and alternative labor-market outcomes such as employment and labor force participation. The heterogeneity analysis shows that both types of reforms reduce unemployment among men and young workers aged 15–24, while significant effects for women are concentrated among young female workers. Finally, we identify key transmission channels through which the reforms operate, including reductions in informality, increases in domestic investment and foreign direct investment, and short-run improvements in total factor productivity.
{"title":"Unemployment impact of network sectors and employment protection legislation reforms: Evidence from selected african countries","authors":"Kwamivi Mawuli Gomado , Isaac Amedanou","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107304","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107304","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the dynamic effects of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) reforms and Network Sector reforms on unemployment in selected African countries from 1990 to 2014. Reforms refer to changes in the EPL or Network Sector institutions index. Using local projections combined with augmented inverse probability weighting (LP–AIPW) and Entropy Balancing techniques to address endogeneity concerns, our findings show that EPL reforms reduce unemployment from the first year after their implementation, while Network Sector reforms also lower unemployment, with significant effects emerging from the second year onward. Robustness checks confirm that these results are consistent across alternative specifications, different definitions of reform episodes, and alternative labor-market outcomes such as employment and labor force participation. The heterogeneity analysis shows that both types of reforms reduce unemployment among men and young workers aged 15–24, while significant effects for women are concentrated among young female workers. Finally, we identify key transmission channels through which the reforms operate, including reductions in informality, increases in domestic investment and foreign direct investment, and short-run improvements in total factor productivity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107304"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-11DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107283
Desheng Wu , Yu Xie
Data monopolies erode a firm’s competitive vitality and threaten the sustainable growth of developing economies. Open government data (OGD) provides a crucial supplementary channel for firms to fairly access data resources. However, past work knows little about how OGD reshapes firm dynamics (firm entry and firm exit). To investigate this, we employ a difference-in-differences model on a comprehensive dataset of high-precision firm registry and OGD launch data. This method leverages the staggered adoption of OGD platforms across Chinese cities, allowing us to isolate the causal effect on firm dynamics. Our findings evidence that while OGD accelerates firm entry, it also triggers risks of firm exit and declining survival rates. Improving the public data support level, especially the quantity and scope of datasets, will effectively mitigate the adverse effects. In terms of data utilization, we emphasize that insufficient algorithmic reserve capacity will accelerate firm exit, while, conversely, entrepreneurship benefits from high reserves in algorithms and computing power. Moreover, we evidence that OGD’s impact on firm dynamics is related to firm scale, industry, and operational models. Grounded in dynamic capability theory, we reveal that digital talent reserves, productivity, and information friction costs are the underlying mechanisms of OGD’s impact on firm dynamics. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that OGD has promoted the allocation of digital talent in non-digital sectors, increased average wages, but at the cost of greater labor displacement. Our findings provide new insights for emerging economies to enhance market competitive vitality through developing public data, while also highlighting the risks of OGD in accelerating the exit of vulnerable firms and unemployment.
{"title":"Government data accessibility and firm dynamics: Encouraging entrepreneurship or accelerating exit?","authors":"Desheng Wu , Yu Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107283","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107283","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Data monopolies erode a firm’s competitive vitality and threaten the sustainable growth of developing economies. Open government data (OGD) provides a crucial supplementary channel for firms to fairly access data resources. However, past work knows little about how OGD reshapes firm dynamics (firm entry and firm exit). To investigate this, we employ a difference-in-differences model on a comprehensive dataset of high-precision firm registry and OGD launch data. This method leverages the staggered adoption of OGD platforms across Chinese cities, allowing us to isolate the causal effect on firm dynamics. Our findings evidence that while OGD accelerates firm entry, it also triggers risks of firm exit and declining survival rates. Improving the public data support level, especially the quantity and scope of datasets, will effectively mitigate the adverse effects. In terms of data utilization, we emphasize that insufficient algorithmic reserve capacity will accelerate firm exit, while, conversely, entrepreneurship benefits from high reserves in algorithms and computing power. Moreover, we evidence that OGD’s impact on firm dynamics is related to firm scale, industry, and operational models. Grounded in dynamic capability theory, we reveal that digital talent reserves, productivity, and information friction costs are the underlying mechanisms of OGD’s impact on firm dynamics. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that OGD has promoted the allocation of digital talent in non-digital sectors, increased average wages, but at the cost of greater labor displacement. Our findings provide new insights for emerging economies to enhance market competitive vitality through developing public data, while also highlighting the risks of OGD in accelerating the exit of vulnerable firms and unemployment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107283"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145738728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-06DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107217
Don S. Lee , Fernando Casal Bértoa
Constitutional regime types matter for democratic consolidation. However, how these institutional factors shape party system development has been rarely studied. Applying Casal Bértoa and Enyedi (2016, 2021) conceptualization and operationalization of party system institutionalization (PSI) – party system closure – as consequences, and using a mixed-methods approach, we provide the mechanisms of why institutional characteristics denoting presidential regimes have a detrimental impact on PSI. Our analysis of an original dataset of all Asian party systems, which spans more than 70 years from the aftermath of the World War II to the end of 2020, shows that (1) direct presidential elections, compared to regimes with no such elections, (2) presidentialism vis-à-vis parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes, and (3) a cabinet’s collective responsibility to the president, as opposed to such responsibility solely to the legislature, all have statistically significant and negative effects on PSI. Our case-study of Indonesia, which changed from parliamentarism to presidentialism in 2004, confirms all these three points. Given the greater chance of the rise of populist outsiders in presidential and president-parliamentary semi-presidential regimes, our findings that party systems are more inchoate and parties may become weaker in properly playing a gatekeeping role in these regimes are particularly concerning.
宪政体制类型对民主巩固至关重要。然而，这些制度因素如何影响政党制度的发展却鲜有研究。运用Casal b rtoa和Enyedi（2016, 2021）对政党制度制度化（PSI）的概念化和操作化——政党制度关闭——作为结果，并使用混合方法，我们提供了代表总统制的制度特征对PSI产生有害影响的机制。我们对所有亚洲政党制度的原始数据集（从第二次世界大战后到2020年底的70多年）进行了分析，结果表明：(1)与没有这种选举的政权相比，总统直接选举；(2)总统制与-à-vis议会制和半总统制政权相比；(3)内阁对总统集体负责，而不是只对立法机关负责。对PSI均有显著的负向影响。我们对2004年从议会制转变为总统制的印度尼西亚的案例研究证实了以上三点。鉴于在总统制和总统-议会半总统制政权中民粹主义局外人崛起的可能性更大，我们的研究发现，政党制度更加不成熟，政党在这些政权中适当发挥把关作用可能会变得更弱，这尤其令人担忧。
{"title":"Does institutional design matter? Constitutional regime types and party system closure in Asia","authors":"Don S. Lee , Fernando Casal Bértoa","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107217","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107217","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Constitutional regime types matter for democratic consolidation. However, how these institutional factors shape party system development has been rarely studied. Applying Casal Bértoa and Enyedi (2016, 2021) conceptualization and operationalization of party system institutionalization (PSI) – party system closure – as consequences, and using a mixed-methods approach, we provide the mechanisms of why institutional characteristics denoting presidential regimes have a detrimental impact on PSI. Our analysis of an original dataset of all Asian party systems, which spans more than 70 years from the aftermath of the World War II to the end of 2020, shows that (1) direct presidential elections, compared to regimes with no such elections, (2) presidentialism vis-à-vis parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes, and (3) a cabinet’s collective responsibility to the president, as opposed to such responsibility solely to the legislature, all have statistically significant and negative effects on PSI. Our case-study of Indonesia, which changed from parliamentarism to presidentialism in 2004, confirms all these three points. Given the greater chance of the rise of populist outsiders in presidential and president-parliamentary semi-presidential regimes, our findings that party systems are more inchoate and parties may become weaker in properly playing a gatekeeping role in these regimes are particularly concerning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107217"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145685712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-05DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107277
Weihua Yu , Jinfei Niu , Xin Yao , Chenchen Deng
The interaction between historical adversity and the evolution of culture traits can leave a long-lasting imprint on contemporary economic outcomes. This paper investigates the enduring impact of historical natural disasters during China’s Ming and Qing dynasties on modern entrepreneurship. We find that individuals originating from regions with higher density of historical natural disasters show a reduced inclination towards entrepreneurship, which could be attributed to the negative effects of historical disasters on the risk-taking attitude, cultivation of interpersonal trust, and human capital investment. These results remain consistent after utilizing both the regression discontinuity method and IV approach to address endogeneity concerns. Overall, these insights not only highlight the persistent historical legacy in shaping the spirit of modern entrepreneurial endeavors, but also shed light on the broader, long-term economic impacts of climate change.
{"title":"Catastrophe’s long reach: How historical natural disasters shape modern entrepreneurship?","authors":"Weihua Yu , Jinfei Niu , Xin Yao , Chenchen Deng","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107277","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107277","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The interaction between historical adversity and the evolution of culture traits can leave a long-lasting imprint on contemporary economic outcomes. This paper investigates the enduring impact of historical natural disasters during China’s Ming and Qing dynasties on modern entrepreneurship. We find that individuals originating from regions with higher density of historical natural disasters show a reduced inclination towards entrepreneurship, which could be attributed to the negative effects of historical disasters on the risk-taking attitude, cultivation of interpersonal trust, and human capital investment. These results remain consistent after utilizing both the regression discontinuity method and IV approach to address endogeneity concerns. Overall, these insights not only highlight the persistent historical legacy in shaping the spirit of modern entrepreneurial endeavors, but also shed light on the broader, long-term economic impacts of climate change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107277"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145665509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-11DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107286
Chowdhury Abdullah-Al-Baki , Ali Ahmed
Using the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh as a natural experiment, this paper examines the long-term educational impacts of early-life disaster exposure. We employ a differences-in-differences approach with data from the 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey to compare educational outcomes between disaster-affected and unaffected districts across birth cohorts with varying exposure timing. The results reveal substantial and persistent negative effects of early-life cyclone exposure on educational attainment. Children exposed during critical early developmental periods (ages 0–3) experience approximately one year reduction in completed schooling, with secondary completion falling by 12–19 percentage points and higher secondary completion by 10–17 percentage points. Mechanism analysis reveals economic hardship as the primary transmission channel, operating through household budget constraints that force reductions in educational investment. Infrastructure damage creates additional barriers through reduced access, while maternal psychological stress extends impacts to post-disaster birth cohorts. Disaster impacts exacerbate existing inequalities: girls experience roughly double the educational losses of boys, while rural populations face consistently larger impacts. The concentration of effects at secondary and higher secondary education levels suggests that disasters may perpetuate intergenerational poverty by blocking access to the formal labor market, where secondary education is often the minimum requirement. Robustness checks, including threats to identification and placebo tests, confirmed that these results reflected a genuine impact of the cyclone rather than coincidental patterns. These findings are urgent given projected increases in extreme weather frequency under climate change, providing strong justification for integrating disaster resilience into human capital development strategies in vulnerable developing countries.
{"title":"The long shadow of natural disasters: educational impacts of the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh","authors":"Chowdhury Abdullah-Al-Baki , Ali Ahmed","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107286","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107286","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh as a natural experiment, this paper examines the long-term educational impacts of early-life disaster exposure. We employ a differences-in-differences approach with data from the 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey to compare educational outcomes between disaster-affected and unaffected districts across birth cohorts with varying exposure timing. The results reveal substantial and persistent negative effects of early-life cyclone exposure on educational attainment. Children exposed during critical early developmental periods (ages 0–3) experience approximately one year reduction in completed schooling, with secondary completion falling by 12–19 percentage points and higher secondary completion by 10–17 percentage points. Mechanism analysis reveals economic hardship as the primary transmission channel, operating through household budget constraints that force reductions in educational investment. Infrastructure damage creates additional barriers through reduced access, while maternal psychological stress extends impacts to post-disaster birth cohorts. Disaster impacts exacerbate existing inequalities: girls experience roughly double the educational losses of boys, while rural populations face consistently larger impacts. The concentration of effects at secondary and higher secondary education levels suggests that disasters may perpetuate intergenerational poverty by blocking access to the formal labor market, where secondary education is often the minimum requirement. Robustness checks, including threats to identification and placebo tests, confirmed that these results reflected a genuine impact of the cyclone rather than coincidental patterns. These findings are urgent given projected increases in extreme weather frequency under climate change, providing strong justification for integrating disaster resilience into human capital development strategies in vulnerable developing countries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107286"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145738172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2026-01-08DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107308
Joshua D. Merfeld , Jonathan Morduch
How we think about development hinges in large part on how we think about poverty. The world community has embraced the goal to end global extreme poverty as a cornerstone of development policy, but we show how success will hinge on how “poverty” is understood. We argue that global poverty will not be eliminated even if the global headcount of poverty is brought to zero. This is because much poverty is experienced within the year by people who are not typically designated as “poor”. Their deprivations may be substantial, but they systematically go uncounted through the process of annualizing data. We consider poverty as experienced during the year and describe the steps needed to truly achieve the goal of ending poverty.
{"title":"What will it mean to end poverty?","authors":"Joshua D. Merfeld , Jonathan Morduch","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107308","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107308","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How we think about development hinges in large part on how we think about poverty. The world community has embraced the goal to end global extreme poverty as a cornerstone of development policy, but we show how success will hinge on how “poverty” is understood. We argue that global poverty will not be eliminated even if the global headcount of poverty is brought to zero. This is because much poverty is experienced within the year by people who are not typically designated as “poor”. Their deprivations may be substantial, but they systematically go uncounted through the process of annualizing data. We consider poverty as experienced during the year and describe the steps needed to truly achieve the goal of ending poverty.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107308"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145926385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2025-12-25DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107294
Raouf Boucekkine , Rodolphe Desbordes , Paolo Melindi-Ghidi
The modernisation theory of regime change is often perceived to be a murky paradigm, lacking theoretical or empirical foundations. In response, we clarify the links between education and regime change. More specifically, we propose that education contributes indirectly to the collapse of autocratic regimes because educated people engage in non-violent (civil) resistance that reduces the effectiveness of the security apparatus. We empirically test the validity of this ‘defanging effect’ of education. We indeed find that the combination of high autocracy and high education levels tends to trigger non-violent campaigns, which in turn increases the likelihood of a regime change, likely to be associated with political liberalisation.
{"title":"The defanging effect of education and autocratic survival","authors":"Raouf Boucekkine , Rodolphe Desbordes , Paolo Melindi-Ghidi","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107294","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107294","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The modernisation theory of regime change is often perceived to be a murky paradigm, lacking theoretical or empirical foundations. In response, we clarify the links between education and regime change. More specifically, we propose that education contributes indirectly to the collapse of autocratic regimes because educated people engage in non-violent (civil) resistance that reduces the effectiveness of the security apparatus. We empirically test the validity of this ‘defanging effect’ of education. We indeed find that the combination of high autocracy and high education levels tends to trigger non-violent campaigns, which in turn increases the likelihood of a regime change, likely to be associated with political liberalisation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107294"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145840506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-04-01Epub Date: 2026-01-09DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107297
Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez , Fernando Rosenblatt , Emiliano Tealde
This paper studies the effect of the Law of Employer Criminal Liability in Uruguay, which criminalizes workplace safety violations. Using detailed data on reported workplace injuries, we employ a Regression Discontinuity in Time design to identify the causal effect of the law. Following the adoption of the law, Uruguay experienced a significant 23 % reduction in reported workplace injuries, with the most pronounced reduction occurring in the industrial and primary sectors. We attribute these results to the law’s deterrent effect rather than to increased prosecutions, as only two employers were convicted under the new legislation. Our findings demonstrate the potential of punitive approaches to enhance workplace safety even in contexts where proactive enforcement is challenging or costly. In addition, they show that laws establishing greater employer liability can significantly reduce injuries without imposing additional administrative burdens.
{"title":"Labor law and workplace injuries","authors":"Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez , Fernando Rosenblatt , Emiliano Tealde","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107297","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107297","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the effect of the Law of Employer Criminal Liability in Uruguay, which criminalizes workplace safety violations. Using detailed data on reported workplace injuries, we employ a Regression Discontinuity in Time design to identify the causal effect of the law. Following the adoption of the law, Uruguay experienced a significant 23 % reduction in reported workplace injuries, with the most pronounced reduction occurring in the industrial and primary sectors. We attribute these results to the law’s deterrent effect rather than to increased prosecutions, as only two employers were convicted under the new legislation. Our findings demonstrate the potential of punitive approaches to enhance workplace safety even in contexts where proactive enforcement is challenging or costly. In addition, they show that laws establishing greater employer liability can significantly reduce injuries without imposing additional administrative burdens.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"200 ","pages":"Article 107297"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145926337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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