Genetic distance, trade, and the diffusion of development

The determinants of countries’ long-term income differences feature prominently in the literature. Spolaore and Wacziarg (The diffusion of development, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2009; 124: 469-529) argue that cultural differences, measured by countries’ genetic distance, are an important barrier to the diffusion of development from the world’s technological frontier. We revisit their findings in three ways. First, we successfully reproduce their results and confirm the robustness of their baseline findings. Second, we estimate their models for different time periods and find that the impact of genetic distance on income differences did not significantly change over time. Finally, we explore one of the underlying mechanisms of technology adoption and show that bilateral trade is one channel through which cultural differences retard the diffusion of development

Cultural distance and interstate conflicts

The literature on the impact of culture on the conduct of international affairs, in particular on conflict proneness, is growing fast. Yet, the question of whether markers of identity influence disputes between states is still subject to disputes, and the empirical evidence on Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis is ambiguous. One issue is the dichotomous nature of the culture variables used, which reduces the dimensionality of the problem significantly. A second issue is considering countries’ individual identities as immutable objects, when the religious and ethnic makeup of modern societies have dramatically changed in the last few decades. We use an array of measures of cultural distance between states, including time-varying and continuous variables, and run a battery of alternative empirical models. Regardless of how we operationalize cultural distance and the empirical specification used, our models consistently show that conflict is more likely between culturally distant countries

Cultural distance and income divergence over time

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

Policies in hard times: assessing the impact of financial crises on structural reforms

It is argued that crises open up a window of opportunity to implement policies that otherwise would not have the necessary political backing. We show that not only is the crises-reforms nexus unfounded in the data, but rather crises are associated with a reversal of liberalisation interventions depending on the institutional environment. We find that, in democratic countries, crises occurrences have no significant impact on liberalisation measures. On the contrary, after a crisis, autocracies reduce liberalisation in multiple economic sectors, which we interpret as the fear of regime change leading non-democratic rulers to please vested economic interests

Genotypic variation in phosphorus efficiency between wheat cultivars grown under greenhouse and field conditions

Phosphorus (P) efficiency (relative growth), which is described as the ratio of shoot dry matter or grain yield at deficient P supply to that obtained under adequate P supply, was compared in 25 winter wheat cultivars grown under greenhouse and field conditions with low and adequate P levels in a P-deficient calcareous soil. Adequate P supply resulted in significant increases in shoot dry weight and grain yield under both experimental conditions. In the greenhouse experiment, the increases in shoot dry weight under adequate P supply (80 mg kg(-1)) were from 0% (cv: C-1252) to 34% (cv: Dagdas). Under field conditions, the cultivars showed much greater variation in their response to adequate P supply (60 kg ha(-1)): the increases in shoot dry weight and grain yield with adequate P supply were between -2% (cv: Sivas-111/33) and 25% (cv: Kirac-66) for shoot dry matter production at the heading stage and between 0% (cv: Kirkpinar-79) and 76% (cv: Kate A-1) for grain yield at maturity. Almost all cultivars behaved totally different in their response to P deficiency under greenhouse and field conditions. Phosphorus efficiency ratios (relative growth) under greenhouse conditions did not correlate with the P efficiency ratios under field conditions. In general, durum wheat cultivars were found to be more P efficient compared with bread wheat cultivars. The results of this study indicated that there is wide variation in tolerance to P deficiency among wheat cultivars that can be exploited in breeding new wheat cultivars for high P deficiency tolerance. The results also demonstrated that P efficiency was expressed differently among the wheat cultivars when grown under greenhouse and field conditions and, therefore, special attention should be paid to growth conditions in screening wheat for P efficiency

Clash of Civilizations: Impact of Culture on Militarized Interstate Dispute

Abstract Huntington (1993a, 1993b, 1998, 2000) argued that the fundamental source of con ‡ict in the post-Cold War world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic, but the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of con ‡ict will be cultural and religious; as such, the primary axis of con‡ict in the future will be along civilizational lines. To that end, in addition to confronting several of Huntington's hypotheses we scrutinize the impact of culture on militarized interstate disputes and test whether countries that belong to di¤erent civilizations tend to be more involved in con ‡ict than countries that belong to the same civilization. We show that over the period of 1816-2001 civilizational dissimilarity in a dyad increases the probability of con ‡ict calculated at the means of the variables by up to 62.8 percentage points. More strikingly, even after controlling for geographic, political, military and economic factors, being part of di¤erent civilizations in the post-Cold War period brings about 71.2 percentage points higher con ‡ict probability than belonging to the same civilization while it reduces the probability of con ‡ict by 25.7 percentage points during the Cold War. JEL Classi…cation: D74, N40, N70, Z10

Clash of civilizations demystified

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

Career incentives in political hierarchy: evidence from Imperial Russia

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