| 1. |
- Arbatlı, Cemal Eren, et al.
(författare)
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Human capital transfers and sub-national development : Armenian and Greek legacy in post-expulsion Turkey
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Growth. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1381-4338 .- 1573-7020. ; 28:1, s. 1-43
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Can the economic legacy of highly skilled groups persist long after they were uprooted from their homelands? To answer this question, we study long-term sub-national development in Turkey after the mass expulsions of the Armenian and Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Since these events led to an almost complete and permanent removal of both communities from Turkey within a short time period, they provide a unique quasi-natural experiment that rules out any direct minority influence on development in the post-expulsion period. By exploiting local variations in historical minority population shares and community buildings across modern districts and villages/neighborhoods within each district, we document a sizable Armenian and Greek legacy effect on contemporary measures of economic development. We argue that this persistent influence is grounded on the significant contribution of Armenian and Greek communities to human capital accumulation among Muslims. We show evidence that inter-group transfers of skills and knowledge were instrumental in this process, leading to greater human capital among Muslims in minority regions both in the past and today.
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| 2. |
- Bove, Vincenzo, et al.
(författare)
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Cultural distance and income divergence over time
- 2020
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Ingår i: Economics Letters. - : Elsevier BV. - 0165-1765. ; 194
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Instead of featuring a long-awaited convergence process, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic income divergence across countries. We propose cultural distance between countries as a determinant of this economic divergence. Cultural similarity makes it easier for societies to interact, learn and adopt from one another. Consequently, cultural differences may lead to economic divergence over time as they slow down the adoption of technological and institutional innovations from the frontier countries. We show that the overall economic divergence observed in the world since the 1950s is driven by countries with high relative cultural distance to the technological frontier. In contrast, the income gap among countries with low relative cultural distance remained unchanged over time. Further analysis reveals that a one-unit rise in relative cultural distance to the frontier is associated with an increased income divergence of almost seven units.
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| 3. |
- Castaneda Dower, Paul, et al.
(författare)
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Did the Cold War Produce Development Clusters in Africa?
- 2021
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper examines the lasting impact of the alignment of African countries during the Cold War on their modern economic development. We find that the division of the continent into two blocs (East/West) led to two clusters of development outcomes that reflect the Cold War’s ideological divide. To determine alignment, we introduce a non-cooperative game of social interactions where each country chooses one of the two existing blocs based on its predetermined bilateral similarities with other members of the bloc. We show the existence of a strong Nash equilibrium in our game and apply the celebrated MaxCut method to identify such a partition. The alignment predicts UN General Assembly voting patterns during the Cold War but not after. Our approach, linking global political interdependence to distinct development paths in Africa, relies on history to extract a micro-founded treatment assignment, while allowing for an endogenous, process-oriented view of historical events.
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| 4. |
- Gokmen, Gunes, et al.
(författare)
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Career incentives in political hierarchy: evidence from Imperial Russia
- 2020
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Ingår i: European Review of Economic History. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1474-0044 .- 1361-4916. ; 24:2, s. 264-287
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper studies political career incentives in a nondemocratic historical setting to assess early political institutions. We construct a novel panel database of governors of Imperial Russia in 91 provinces between 1895 and 1914. Measuring an imperial governor’s performance by his ability of peacekeeping, we test whether the central authorities in the Russian Empire resorted to career incentives to improve the performance of provincial governors. We find that the central administration promoted better performing governors only in the peripheral provinces (oblasts), but not in the main ones (gubernias). In addition, we show that political connections had no significant effect on career prospects.
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| 5. |
- Gokmen, Gunes
(författare)
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Clash of civilizations demystified
- 2019
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0176-2680. ; 60
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper provides empirical evidence in support of the clash-of-civilizations view on the nature of interstate conflicts in the post-Cold War era. First, we show that countries belonging to different civilizations have a higher probability of interstate conflict before and after the Cold War period, but not during the Cold War. Second, we explain the differential impact of civilizations on conflict over time by providing evidence that civilizational differences were suppressed during the Cold War by ideology and super-power camps. Third, we provide evidence that the component of civilizations that matters the most for conflict in the post-Cold War period is language, and not religion. Fourth, we analyze the long-term cultural, geographical and historical determinants of civilizational differences, and show that language has the largest explanatory power.
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| 6. |
- Gokmen, Gunes, et al.
(författare)
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Inequality in the aftermath of financial crises: some empirical evidence
- 2019
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Ingår i: Applied Economics Letters. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1466-4291 .- 1350-4851. ; 26:19, s. 1558-1562
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Analyzing 70 countries over the period 1973–2006, we empirically show that, in the aftermath of financial crises, income inequality exhibits no general pattern of change. This holds for both advanced and emerging economies. However, when we break down the analysis by crisis types, we find that, after stock market crises, inequality goes down in advanced countries, while there is no statistically significant association in emerging ones.
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| 7. |
- Gokmen, Gunes, et al.
(författare)
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Investment shocks and inequality dynamics
- 2021
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Ingår i: Economic Modelling. - : Elsevier BV. - 0264-9993. ; 94, s. 570-579
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We explore the dynamics of income and income inequality under asymmetric information in credit markets. Within a stochastic overlapping-generations framework, we study the investment decision of entrepreneurs with heterogeneous abilities. Under information asymmetry, banks do not observe entrepreneurial ability and offer a single pooled loan contract to all entrepreneurs. We show that, following a negative investment shock, the average quality of the entrepreneur pool improves and banks optimally react by lowering the pooled borrowing rate. This reduction in the borrowing rate mitigates the drop in entrepreneurs' income. Consequently, after a negative investment shock, income inequality decreases less compared to the case of full information. Our findings therefore suggest that information asymmetry lessens the fluctuations in income inequality.
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| 8. |
- Gokmen, Gunes, et al.
(författare)
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Policies in Hard Times: Assessing the Impact of Financial Crises on Structural Reforms
- 2021
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Ingår i: Economic Journal. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1468-0297 .- 0013-0133. ; 131:638, s. 2529-2552
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is commonly argued that crises open up a window of opportunity to implement policies that otherwise would not have the necessary political backing. The argument goes that the political cost of economic and social reforms declines as crises unravel structural problems that need to be urgently rectified and the public is more willing to bear the pains associated with such reforms. This paper casts doubt on this prevalent view by showing that not only is the crises-reforms nexus unfounded in the data, but rather crises are associated with a reversal of liberalization interventions depending on the institutional environment. In particular, we look at measures of liberalization in international trade, agriculture, network industries, and financial markets. We find that, in democratic countries, crises occurrences have no significant impact on liberalization measures. On the contrary, after a crisis, autocracies reduce liberalization in multiple economic sectors, which we interpret as the fear of regime change leading non-democratic rulers to please vested economic interests.
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| 9. |
- Gokmen, Gunes, et al.
(författare)
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The imperial roots of global trade
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Growth. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1381-4338 .- 1573-7020. ; 25:1, s. 87-145
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Throughout history empires facilitated trade within their territories by building and securing trade and migration routes, and by imposing common norms, languages, religions, and legal systems, all of which led to the accumulation of imperial capital. In this paper, we collect novel data on the rise and fall of empires over the last 5000 years, construct a measure of accumulated imperial capital between countries, and estimate its relationship with trade patterns today. Our measure of imperial capital has a positive and significant effect on trade beyond potential historical legacies such as sharing a language, a religion, a legal system, or links via natural trade and invasion routes. This suggests a persistent and previously unexplored influence of long-gone empires on current trade.
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| 10. |
- Sinding Bentzen, Jeanet, et al.
(författare)
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The power of religion
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Growth. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1381-4338 .- 1573-7020. ; 28:1, s. 45-78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper studies to what extent religion has been used to legitimize political power throughout the world and how this matters for current institutions.Historically, some rulers have used religion to legitimize their power, while others relied on more democratic means. This tendency, termed divine legitimization, incentivized rulers to embed religion into institutions. We illustrate within a simple framework that the use of religion to legitimize power and the consequent institutionalization of religion may help explain why religion and religious institutions have persisted despite modernization. To test empirically, we combine data on pre-modern religious beliefs across 1265 ethnographic societies, various geographic data, and current data on the prevalence of religious laws in 176 countries. We provide evidence in support of divine legitimization and the resulting institutionalization of religion. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in the incentives to employ religion for power purposes. We further document that countries that relied on divine legitimization are more autocratic today and their populace more religious. These results contribute to our understanding of the persistence of religious as well as autocratic institutions.
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