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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Gautam Rao; Stefano DellaVigna; John List; Ulrike Malmendier |
| Abstract: | We design a model-based field experiment to estimate the nature and magnitude of workers' social references towards their employers. We hire 446 workers for a one-time task. Within worker, we vary (i) piece rates; (ii) whether the work has payoffs only for the worker, or also for the employer; and (iii) the return to the employer. We then introduce a surprise increase or decrease in pay (`gifts') from the employer. We find that workers have substantial baseline social preferences towards their employers, even in the absence of repeated-game incentives. Consistent with models of warm glow or social norms, but not of pure altruism, workers exert substantially more effort when their work is consequential to their employer, but are insensitive to the precise return to the employer. Turning to reciprocity, we find little evidence of a response to unexpected positive (or negative) gifts from the employer. Our structural estimates of the social preferences suggest that, if anything, positive reciprocity in response to monetary `gifts' may be larger than negative reciprocity. We revisit the results of previous field experiments on gift exchange using our model and derive a one-parameter expression for the implied reciprocity in these experiments. |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:396911&r=evo |
| By: | Ani Harutyunyan (LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance at KU Leuven); Ömer Özak (Southern Methodist University) |
| Abstract: | This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and economic development. It shows that culture's direct effects on development and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally equivalent. In particular, using a large set of cultural measures, it establishes empirically that pairwise differences in contemporary development are associated with pairwise cultural differences relative to the technological frontier, only in cases where observational equivalence holds. Additionally, it establishes that differences in cultural traits that are correlated with genetic and linguistic distances are statistically and economically significantly correlated with differences in economic development. These results highlight the difficulty of disentangling the direct and barrier effects of culture, while lending credence to the idea that common ancestry generates persistence and plays a central role in economic development. |
| Keywords: | Comparative economic development, economic growth, culture, barriers to technological diffusion, genetic distances, linguistic distances |
| JEL: | O10 O11 O20 O33 O40 O47 O57 Z10 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smu:ecowpa:1606&r=evo |
| By: | Efraim Benmelech; Esteban F. Klor |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the link between economic, political, and social conditions and the global phenomenon of ISIS foreign fighters. We find that poor economic conditions do not drive participation in ISIS. In contrast, the number of ISIS foreign fighters is positively correlated with a country's GDP per capita and Human Development Index (HDI). In fact, many foreign fighters originate from countries with high levels of economic development, low income inequality, and highly developed political institutions. Other factors that explain the number of ISIS foreign fighters are the size of a country's Muslim population and its ethnic homogeneity. Although we cannot directly determine why people join ISIS, our results suggest that the flow of foreign fighters to ISIS is driven not by economic or political conditions but rather by ideology and the difficulty of assimilation into homogeneous Western countries. |
| JEL: | H0 H56 K42 O52 O53 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22190&r=evo |
| By: | Victor Ginsburgh; Shlomo Weber |
| Abstract: | The chapter gives an overview of the various approaches to compute linguistic distances (the lexicostatistic method, Levenshtein distances, distances based on language trees, phonetic distances, the ASJP project and distances based on learning scores) as well as distances between groups. It also briefly describes how distances directly affect economic outcomes such as international trade, migrations, language acquisition and earnings, translations. Finally one can construct indices that take account (or not) of distances and how these indices are used by economists to measure their impact on outcomes such as redistribution, the provision of public goods, growth, or corruption aswell as on the effects of certain linguistic policies. |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/229785&r=evo |
| By: | Thiemo, Fetzer (University ofWarwick); Marden, Samuel (University of Sussex) |
| Abstract: | Weak property rights are strongly associated with underdevelopment, low state capacity and civil conflict. In economic models of conflict, outbreaks of violence require two things: the prize must be both valuable and contestable. This paper exploits spatial and temporal variation in contestability of land title to explore the relation between (in) secure property rights and conflict in the Brazilian Amazon. Our estimates suggest that, at the local level, assignment of secure property rights eliminates substantively all land related conflict, even without changes in enforcement. Changes in land use are also consistent with reductions in land related conflict. |
| Keywords: | property rights, land titling, conflict, deforestation JEL Classification: O12, Q15, D74, Q23 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:285&r=evo |
| By: | Thiemo Fetzer; Samuel Marden |
| Abstract: | Weak property rights are strongly associated with underdevelopment, low state capacity and civil conflict. In economic models of conflict, outbreaks of violence require two things: the prize must be both valuable and contestable. This paper exploits spatial and temporal variation in contestability of land title to explore the relation between (in)secure property rights and conflict in the Brazilian Amazon. Our estimates suggest that, at the local level, assignment of secure property rights eliminates substantively all land related conflict, even without changes in enforcement. Changes in land use are also consistent with reductions in land related conflict. |
| Keywords: | property rights, land titling, conflict, deforestation |
| JEL: | O12 Q15 D74 Q23 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0194&r=evo |