Working Paper
Kaivan Munshi and Mark Rosenzweig. Working Paper. “
"Insiders and Outsiders: Local Ethnic Politic s and Public Goods Provision"”.
AbstractWe examine the role of ethnic politics at the local level in supplying public goods within a framework that incorporates two sides to ethnic groups: an inclusionary side associated with internal cooperation and an exclusionary side associated with the disregard for others. The inclusionary aspect of ethnic politics results in the selection of more able political representatives who exert more effort, resulting in an increased supply of non-excludable public goods. The exclusionary aspect of ethnic politics results in the capture of targetable public resources by insiders; i.e. the representative's own group, at the expense of outsiders. Using newly available Indian data, covering all the major states over three election terms at the most local (ward) level, we provide empirical evidence that is consistent with both sides of ethnic politics. Counterfactual simulations using structural estimates of the model are used to quantify the impact of alternative policies that, based on our theory and the empirical results, are expected to increase the supply of public goods.
munshirosenzweig2015.pdf Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov, and Konstantin Sonin. Working Paper. “
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND INSTITUTIONAL PERSISTENCE”.
AbstractIn this essay, we provide a simple conceptual framework to elucidate the forces that lead to
institutional persistence and change. Our framework is based on a dynamic game between
different groups, who care both about current policies and institutions and future policies, which are themselves determined by current institutional choices, and clarifies the forces that lead to the most extreme form of institutional persistence (“institutional stasis”) and the potential drivers of institutional change. We further study the strategic stability of institutions, which arises when institutions persist because of fear of subsequent, less beneficial changes that would follow initial reforms. More importantly, we emphasize that, despite the popularity of ideas based on institutional stasis in the economics and political science literatures, most institutions are in a constant state of flux, but their trajectory may still be shaped by past institutional choices, thus exhibiting “path-dependent change”, so that initial conditions determine both the subsequent trajectories of institutions and how they respond to shocks. We conclude the essay by discussing how institutions can be designed to bolster stability, the relationship between social mobility and institutions, and the interplay between culture and institutions.
acemoglu_et_al_persistence.pdf Mario Chacón and Jeffrey Jensen. Working Paper. “
"The Institutional Determinants of Southern Secession"”.
AbstractWe use the Southern secession movement of 1860-1861 to study how elites in democracy enact their preferred policies. Most states used specially convened conventions to determine whether or not to secede from the Union. We argue that although the delegates of these conventions were popularly elected, the electoral rules favored slaveholders. Using an original dataset of representation in each convention, we first demonstrate that slave-intensive districts were systematically overrepresented. Slave-
holders were also spatially concentrated and could thereby obtain local pluralities in favor of secession more easily. As a result of these electoral biases, less than 10% of the electorate was sucient to elect a majority of delegates in four of the six original Confederate states. We also show how delegates representing slave-intensive counties were more likely to support secession. These factors explain the disproportionate
influence of slaveholders during the crisis and why secessionists strategically chose conventions over statewide referenda.
chaconjensen2017.pdf Francesco Trebbi and Eric Weese. Working Paper. “
"Insurgency and Small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures"”.
AbstractInsurgency and guerrilla warfare impose enormous socio-economic costs and
often persist for decades. The opacity of such forms of conflict is often an
obstacle to effective international humanitarian intervention and development
programs. To shed light on the internal organization of otherwise unknown
insurgent groups, this paper proposes two methodologies for the detection of
unobserved coalitions of militant factions in conflict areas, and studies their
main determinants. Our approach is parsimonious and based on daily geocoded
incident-level data on insurgent attacks alone. We provide applications to the
Afghan conflict during the 2004-2009 period and to Pakistan during the 2008-
2011 period, identifying systematically different coalition structures. Further
applications are discussed.
Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Working Paper. “
Intergovernmental Grants and Policy Competition: Concepts, Institutions, and Evidence ”.
Abstract
Our purpose is three-fold. First, we summarize some of the core insights from both classic and more recent papers in the literature on the role of intergovernmental grants in systems of fiscal federalism. Second, we provide an updated look at some of the key institutions through which intergovernmental transfers are implemented in the United States. Third, we consider the rich environment of the COVID-19 pandemic in which new additional intergovernmental transfers were deployed, and present empirical evidence on how they affected state-level corporate tax policy. We conclude by discussing productive directions for future research on the economics of fiscal federalism and the role of intergovernmental grants as policy instruments in federal systems.
Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Working Paper. “
Intergovernmental Grants and Policy Competition: Concepts, Institutions, and Evidence ”.
Abstract
Our purpose is three-fold. First, we summarize some of the core insights from both classic and more recent papers in the literature on the role of intergovernmental grants in systems of fiscal federalism. Second, we provide an updated look at some of the key institutions through which intergovernmental transfers are implemented in the United States. Third, we consider the rich environment of the COVID-19 pandemic in which new additional intergovernmental transfers were deployed, and present empirical evidence on how they affected state-level corporate tax policy. We conclude by discussing productive directions for future research on the economics of fiscal federalism and the role of intergovernmental grants as policy instruments in federal systems.
Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Working Paper. “
Intergovernmental Grants and Policy Competition: Concepts, Institutions, and Evidence ”.
Abstract
Our purpose is three-fold. First, we summarize some of the core insights from both classic and more recent papers in the literature on the role of intergovernmental grants in systems of fiscal federalism. Second, we provide an updated look at some of the key institutions through which intergovernmental transfers are implemented in the United States. Third, we consider the rich environment of the COVID-19 pandemic in which new additional intergovernmental transfers were deployed, and present empirical evidence on how they affected state-level corporate tax policy. We conclude by discussing productive directions for future research on the economics of fiscal federalism and the role of intergovernmental grants as policy instruments in federal systems.
Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Working Paper. “
Intergovernmental Grants and Policy Competition: Concepts, Institutions, and Evidence ”.
Abstract
Our purpose is three-fold. First, we summarize some of the core insights from both classic and more recent papers in the literature on the role of intergovernmental grants in systems of fiscal federalism. Second, we provide an updated look at some of the key institutions through which intergovernmental transfers are implemented in the United States. Third, we consider the rich environment of the COVID-19 pandemic in which new additional intergovernmental transfers were deployed, and present empirical evidence on how they affected state-level corporate tax policy. We conclude by discussing productive directions for future research on the economics of fiscal federalism and the role of intergovernmental grants as policy instruments in federal systems.
Mark Dincecco and Yuhua Wang. Working Paper. “
Internal Conflict, Elite Action, and State Failure: Evidence from China, 1000-1911”.
AbstractThis paper analyzes the long-run dynamics of internal conflict, elite action over privately versus publicly-provided security, and state development outcomes in China. We construct new county-level data that span nearly one millennium. We find that, traditionally, elites turned away from clans and toward the imperial government for safety in times of internal conflict. After the new globalizing Western influence took hold in the mid-1800s, however, threatening the imperial government’s viability, we find that elites turned back toward clans for protection, particularly during the Taiping Rebellion. Finally, we find a positive link between renewed clan activity and the eventual failure of the imperial Qing state. Our analysis provides a new perspective on the political origins of the Great Divergence, by which Europe took off economically, but China fell behind.
dinceccowang2018.pdf Vidya Sri. Working Paper.
The Istanbul Convention's Compliance with the UN Handbook for Legislation on Violence Against Women. Carr Center for Human Rights, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Abstract
The Istanbul Convention complies very closely with the UN Handbook for Legislation on Violence Against Women (VAW).* Nonetheless, the Convention diverges from the Handbook in a number of important ways. This document summarizes these divergences.
Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, Joseph Henrich, and Jonathan Schulz. Working Paper. “
Kin-based institutions and economic development”.
Preprint PDF Benjamin Enke. Working Paper. “
"Kinship Systems, Cooperation and the Evolution of Culture"”.
AbstractCultural psychologists and anthropologists argue that societies have developed heterogeneous systems of social organization to cope with social dilemmas, and that an entire bundle of cultural characteristics has coevolved to enforce cooperation within these different systems. This paper develops a measure of the historical tightness of kinship structures to provide empirical evidence for this large body of theories. In the data, societies with loose ancestral kinship ties cooperate and trust broadly, which is apparently sustained through a belief in moralizing gods, universally applicable moral principles, feelings of guilt, and large-scale institutions. Societies with a historically tightly knit kinship structure, on the other hand, exhibit strong in-group favoritism: they cheat on and are distrusting of out-group members, but readily support in-group members in need. This cooperation scheme is enforced by moral values of in-group loyalty, conformity to tight social norms, emotions of shame, and strong local institutions. These relationships hold across historical ethnicities, contemporary countries, ethnicities within countries, and migrants. The results suggest that religious beliefs, language, emotions, morality, and social norms all coevolved to support specific social cooperation systems.
enkesept2017.pdf Donald R. Davis, Eric Mengus, and Tomasz K. Michalski. Working Paper. “
LABOR MARKET POLARIZATION AND THE GREAT DIVERGENCE: THEORY AND EVIDENCE”.
AbstractIn recent decades, middle-paid jobs have declined, replaced by a mix of high and low-paid jobs. This is labor market polarization. At the same time, initially skilled and typically larger cities have become even more skilled relative to initially less skilled and typically smaller cities. This is the great divergence. We develop a theory that links these two phenomena. We draw on existing models of polarization and heterogeneous labor in spatial equilibrium, adding to these a sharper interaction of individual-and city-level comparative advantage. We then confront the predictions of the theory with detailed data on occupational growth for a sample of 117 French cities. We find, consistent with our theory, that middle-paid jobs decline most sharply in larger cities; that these lost jobs are replaced two-to-one by high-paid jobs in the largest cities and two-to-one by low-paid jobs in the smallest cities; and that the lost middle-paid jobs are concentrated in an upper tier in the large cities and a lower tier in the smaller cities.
davis_et_al_labor_market_polarization.pdf Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W Buell, Taly Reich, and Michael I Norton. Working Paper. “
"Last-Place Aversion": Evidence and Redistributive Implications”.
kuziemkoetal2014.pdf Christian Dippel and Stephan Heblich. Working Paper. “
Leadership and Social Norms: Evidence from the Forty-Eighters in the Civil War”.
AbstractA growing theoretical literature emphasizes the role that leaders play in shaping beliefs and social norms. We provide empirical evidence for such ‘civic leadership.’ We focus on the Forty-Eighters, a group of political refugees from Germany's failed 1848 revolutions, and their role in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Our primary outcome is volunteering for the Union Army. Given the enormously high death toll during the Civil War, this variable provides a powerful measure of social norms against slavery. We show that towns where Forty-Eighters settled in the 1850s increased their Union Army enlistments by eighty percent over the course of the war. Using machine-learning techniques to infer soldiers' ancestry, we find that the Forty-Eighters had the biggest impact on the enlistment of German Americans, a smaller effect on English-speaking men (American and Irish), and yet a smaller effect on Scandinavian and Italian men. Forty-Eighters who fought in the war and were successful at raising a regiment had the biggest effect on enlistment, and Forty-Eighters also had a discernible effect in the field of battle, lowering their fellow soldiers' likelihood of desertion.
dippelheblich2018.pdf Roman Levkin. Working Paper. “
"The Legacy of Empires on Political Outcomes in Romania”.
AbstractThis paper investigates the discontinuity in political outcomes at the former Habsburg-Ottoman border in contemporary Romania. Historically Romania consisted of three provinces which were divided between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. The country united in the beginning of the 20-th century and was turned into a national unitary state with a highly centralized economy. We posit that the striking institutional differences between two parts of the country in the 18th and 19th centuries could persist and influence political attitudes of people nowadays despite the fact that there was convergence in economic development across its regions and it has homogeneous institutions today. We test this hypothesis by merging data on historical borders between Habsburg and Ottoman Empires with data on voting in elections in Romania at the municipality level in the 1990s and 2000s. We find that on average within Romania the former Habsburg affiliation is associated with an increase in the percentage of votes for the major “right” parties by 3.5% and a decrease in the percentage of votes for the major “left” party by 4.5%. This is a remarkable effect taking into account that we identify these differences in political attitudes around the former border in a country which united a century ago and where during the Communist period the authorities tried to eliminate any regional differences. We do not find evidence that these differences might be explained by past ethnic diversity or geographical isolation.
Jamie Bologna Pavlik and Andrew T. Young. Working Paper. “
"The Legacy of Representation in Medieval Europe for Incomes and Institutions Today."”.
AbstractWhy can some governments credibly commit to the rule of law and protection of property rights while others cannot? A potential answer involves deep historical traditions of institutions that constrain rulers. We explore whether experiences with representative assemblies in medieval/early modern Europe have left their mark on incomes and institutions today. We employ Stasavage’s (2010) data on representative assembly activity in 30 medieval/early modern European polities and the Putterman and Weil (2010) data on descendancy shares from circa 1500 populations to construct country-level measures of historical assembly experience. In a cross-country analysis, we find that assembly experience is positively and significantly correlated with current incomes, a measure of the rule of law and property rights, and the Polity IV index that emphasizes executive constraint. Once the latter two variables are controlled for, the estimated effect of assembly experience on current incomes is insignificant. However, the correlation between assembly experience and either institutional measure is robust to controlling for (among other variables) current income levels, 1500 income levels, human capital levels, and two different measures of general European influence.
pavlikyoung2017.pdf Working Paper.
Lessons learned from Grassroots Organizations in Kenya and Zimbabwe . Initiative on VAW, Carr Center for Human Rights.
AbstractThis presentation analyzes case studies from Kenya and Zimbabwe to determine the effectiveness of the Maputo Protocol on a state level.
ppt_presentation_vaw_briefing_-_tanya_sukhija_28229.pptx