A new GLO Discussion Paperfinds no significant relationship between Protestant missions and the development of democracy.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: In “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy”, Robert D. Woodberry (2012) claims that the emergence of stable democracies around the world was influenced by conversionary Protestantism. While Woodberry’s historical analysis is exhaustive, the accompanying empirical evidence suffers from severe inconsistencies. We replicate Woodberry’s analysis using 26 alternative democracy measures and extend the time period over which the democracy measures are averaged. These two simple modifications lead to the breakdown of Woodberry’s results. We find no significant relationship between Protestant missions and the development of democracy, which raises concerns about the robustness and broader applicability of Woodberry’s findings. We discuss some alternative explanations for Woodberry’s results which we hope can inform future research on this topic.
A new GLO Discussion Paper for China finds that labor scarcity encourages firms to adopt more incentive pay which leads to higher firm productivity and reduces misallocation of labor.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: This study examines the causes and consequences of incentive pay adoption among Chinese manufacturing firms. First, we find that a higher degree of labor scarcity encourages firms to adopt more incentive pay. Second, using an instrumental variables approach, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in the intensity of incentive pay results in 38% higher firm productivity. Third, the average productivity differences between SOEs and non-SOEs decrease by about 65% after controlling differences in incentive pay adoption. Therefore, facilitating incentive pay adoption among firms with better labor endowments (e.g. SOEs) increases productivity while reduces resource misallocation in developing countries.
The GLO Discussion Paper of the Month of February finds that raising the school leaving age can be effective in reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancy among socially excluded women, even if it does not affect the general population. An important policy implication is the potentially heterogeneous impact of educational interventions across different ethnic groups.
Author Abstract:This
paper examines the effects of an increase in the compulsory school
leaving age on the teenage fertility of Roma women, a disadvantaged
ethnic minority in Hungary. We use a regression discontinuity design
identification strategy and show that the reform decreased the
probability of teenage motherhood among Roma women by 13.4-26.0% and
delayed motherhood by two years. We separate the incapacitation and
human capital effects of education on fertility by exploiting a database
that covers live births, miscarriages, abortions and still births, and
contains information on the time of conception precise to the week. We
find that longer schooling decreases the probability of getting pregnant
during the school year but not during summer and Christmas breaks,
which suggests that the estimated effects are generated mostly through
the incapacitation channel.
GLO DP Team Senior
Editors: Matloob Piracha (University of Kent) & GLO; Klaus F.
Zimmermann (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University and Bonn University). Managing Editor: Magdalena Ulceluse, University of Groningen. DP@glabor.org
Journal of Population Economics (2020) 33: 461–482. In China, social networks play an important role in risk sharing. The paper shows that the main channel through which siblings affect household investment is risk sharing.
Posted inNews, Research|Comments Off on Risk sharing, siblings, and household equity. Paper published in the April 2020 issue of the Journal of Population Economics.
Journal of Population Economics (2020) 33: 441-460.The paper shows that the optimality of authority (leadership) delegation for the sequential-action game played by rotten kids and a parent depends crucially on the degree of heterogeneity in the kids’ preferences. The findings contribute to the debate about the social desirability of the authoritative parenting style.
Journal of Population Economics (2020) 33: 413-440.The paper documents that children higher in the birth order are much more likely to be unwanted, and this is associated with negative life cycle outcomes.
Posted inNews, Research|Comments Off on Birth order and unwanted fertility. Paper published in the April 2020 issue of the Journal of Population Economics.
Journal of Population Economics (2020) 33: 395–411. The lead paper in the April 2020 issue of the journal provides a growth-theoretic analysis of the effects of intellectual property rights on the take-off of an economy from an era of stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth. Strengthening patent protection leads to an earlier take-off but also reduces economic growth in the long run.
A new GLO Discussion Paper evaluates the impact of a policy reform in Belgium on the transition to work of young labor market entrants with little experiences: Only short-term effects.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact on the transition to work of a policy reform in Belgium that restricted the access to a specific unemployment insurance scheme for young labor market entrants. This scheme entitles youths with no or little labor market experience to unemployment benefits after a waiting period of one year. As of 2015, the Belgian government unexpectedly scrapped benefit eligibility for youths who start the waiting period at the age of 24 or older. The reform implied a change from an inclining to a flat rate (zero-level) benefit profile. We use a difference-in-differences approach to identify the causal impact of this reform on fresh university graduates. Our main finding is that this reform only increases the transition to very short-lived jobs.
A new GLO Discussion Paper attempts to identify and discuss the on-the-job resilience strategies of mismatched workers in Egypt.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract:Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the on-the-job resilience strategies of mismatched workers. We empirically focus on Egyptian workers. Design/Methodology/Approach – This study relies on a primary micro-data collection based on design and implementation of a self-administered questionnaire survey and on the conduction of a series of semi-structured interviews. Findings – The results are fourfold: first, the combination of over-qualification and under-skilling is the most frequent in our sample; second, resilience strategies adopted by over-skilled workers mainly depend on mobility and entry to entrepreneurship; third, under-skilled workers do not enter entrepreneurship, but tend to rely on informal on-the-job learning and training opportunities. Fourth, religion and spirituality play a transversal role to cope with adversity for all of our interviewed workers. Originality/value – This study is unique as it draws our attention on factors of resilience for mismatched workers in a developing country, Egypt.
In GLO Discussion Paper No. 450, GLO FellowsStepan Jurajda and Dejan Kovač have recently provided research evidence revealing that given first names of leaders from World War II can predict behavior in the 1991-1995 Croatian war of independence and beyond in society including voting. It provides hard evidence for intergenerational transmission of nationalism. This research work has found already much interest in the scientific community and beyond. It was reviewed by anonymous referees of the Journal of Population Economics and finally accepted for a forthcoming publication in a 2020 journal issue. Below, the authors are interviewed about the background and context of this research.
Stepan Jurajda & Dejan Kovač: Names and Behavior in a War, GLO Discussion Paper 450, 2020. Forthcoming Journal of Population Economics.
Interview
GLO: Scientists across various disciplines have found in recent studies that names of individuals reflect important information about norms, preferences and behavior. What is your innovative approach?
Stepan Jurajda: Our analysis implies that having a ‘nationalist’ first name, one that is synonymous with previous war leader(s), predicts costly patriotic behavior in a current war, presumably due to values transmitted from parents. In our analysis, name choices thus act as an indirect proxy for a strong form of nationalism — the willingness to fight and die in a war for national independence.
Dejan Kovač: Such values are in principle difficult to elicit in surveys, which, together with the war context, sets our analysis apart from other research based on names.
GLO: Other researchers show that history, culture and personal experiences long time ago have a strong impact on current behavior. How does this contribute to our understanding of challenging issues of our time?
Dejan Kovač: Our study of the active engagement in the delivery of an extremely costly public good suggests that the living memory of a previous war allows nations to deal with the collective action problem of participation in a current war.
Stepan Jurajda: We also provide evidence on the nature of inter-generational transmission of political values, an issue that is receiving more and more attention in recent research.
GLO: How did you come to this topic of research, names and behavior in a war?
Dejan Kovač: We were aware of previous research on how names affect individual outcomes on the labor market and in many other settings, and we were wondering whether this strategy can help us understand the massive volunteering for the 1991-1995 Croatian War of Independence. After realizing that indeed it can, we also studied how the values we approximate using name choices relate to current political values in the country.
GLO: What can the world learn from your study?
Stepan Jurajda: Our measurement approach for values that are difficult to elicit in surveys and for values that affected historical events is applicable in other countries that feature a sharply divided ethnic mix and in settings where leaders’ names are notoriously associated with their political beliefs. Given the widespread availability of birth certificate records, the approach is available in many historical settings and it naturally lends itself to the study of inter-generational transmission of values within families, which can help us understand why the effects that wars have on political values and on in-group cooperative behavior are so long-lived.
GLO: Dejan, the paper raised a lot of controversy during your recent campaign for President, why?
Dejan Kovač: Unfortunately, in Croatia we have not yet dealt with many important historical debates and there is still a great division today in the society related to the WWII Croatian history. In fact, one of the reasons of my candidacy was to promote not only civic freedoms, but also scientific freedoms to explore “untested” hypotheses. I would say the paper was used to misinform the general public in order to discredit my political candidacy. The paper does not claim that the values related to the names we study are the same as the values of the WWII leadership of Croatia; we simply have a proxy for nationalistic/patriotic values as of 1991-1995 that allows us to study several important questions. The attacks did not relate to the methodology and made little scientific sense; they were purely political and came from individuals who are politically active, either on the far right or the far left part of the political spectrum. Since some of my other research is on political networks and corruption, I guess I should not be surprised to be attacked through misrepresentation of my work. My agenda is purely scientific and I am a firm believer in a well functioning democracy, where we have institutions, which battle corruption. That being said – the research as well as my political activism mission goes on! (Note: See also the recent GLO interview with Dejan Kovač about his Presidential Race in Croatia.)
*** With Stepan Jurajda & Dejan Kovač spoke Klaus F. Zimmermann, GLO President.
About the authors
Stepan Jurajda: CERGE-EI; Professor at Charles University Prague and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Dejan Kovač: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs and Economics Department at Princeton University.
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