Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level

There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot easily be controlled for. The innovation of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) was to address this last point by using settler mortality as an instrument for geography-induced endogenous institutions and found that this supported their line of reasoning. We believe there is value-added to consider this debate at the micro level within a country as particularly questions of parameter heterogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity are likely to be smaller than between countries. Moreover, at the micro level it is possible to identify more precise transmission mechanisms from geography via institutions to economic development outcomes. In particular, we examine the determinants of economic development across villages on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi and find that geography-induced endogenous emergence of land rights is the critical institutional link between geographic conditions and technological change. We therefore highlight and empirically validate a new transmission channel from endogenously generated institutions on economic development.geography, migration, land rights, institutions, technology adoption, agricultural development, Indonesia

Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level

There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot easily be controlled for. The innovation of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) was to address this last point by using settler mortality as an instrument for geography-induced endogenous institutions and found that this supported their line of reasoning. We believe there is value-added to consider this debate at the micro level within a country as particularly questions of parameter heterogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity are likely to be smaller than between countries. Moreover, at the micro level it is possible to identify more precise transmission mechanisms from geography via institutions to economic development outcomes. In particular, we examine the determinants of economic development across villages on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi and find that geography-induced endogenous emergence of land rights is the critical institutional link between geographic conditions and technological change. We therefore highlight and empirically validate a new transmission channel from endogenously generated institutions on economic development.geography, migration, land rights, institutions, technology adoption, agricultural development, Indonesia

Institutions, Economic Development, and Deforestation

This paper offers a unified framework linking two important debates: First, the debate about the respective roles of geography and institutions on economic development; Second, the literature on the role of technological change and economic development on agricultural intensification and land use changes. We use this framework to study empirically deforestation patterns at the rainforest margin. To this end we specify an empirical model that can explore the causal chain ranging from geographic conditions via institutional change to economic development and deforestation. We estimate this model using a unique data set of villages at the rainforest margin in Indonesia. Our results show that geography-induced institutional change is the key driver of technological change in our villages. The bad news is that some of these processes along the causal chain seem to promote deforestation. The good news is that economic development, conditional on these effects, appears to reduce deforestation. --

A Human Development Index by Income Groups

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries. We suggest a relatively easy and intuitive approach which allows to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows comparisons of the level in human development of the poor and non-poor within and across countries. An empirical illustration shows large discrepancies in human development within countries especially in Africa. These discrepancies are lower the higher the HDI, but only weekly so. Inequality in income is generally higher than inequality in education and life-expectancy. --Human Development,Income Inequality,Differential Mortality,Inequality in Education

A Human Development Index by Income Groups

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. We suggest a relatively easy and intuitive approach which allows to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows to compare the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. An empirical illustration for a sample of 13 low and middle income countries and 2 industrialized countries shows that inequality in human development within countries is indeed high. The results also show that the level of inequality is only weakly correlated with the level of human development itself.Human Development, Income Inequality, Differential Mortality, Inequality in Education

Human rights dialogue with Arab States: argumentation patterns of authoritarian regimes as a challenge for a values-based foreign policy

Germany is being met with rejection from the governments of Arab states when it calls for human rights to be respected. If those being addressed do not outright refuse to engage in dialogue, they usually rely on four patterns of argumentation to ward off corresponding demands: (1) the human rights situation in their own country is already improving, but the process still needs time, (2) concerns such as economic development and the fight against terrorism should take precedence over civil rights, (3) human rights are a Western construct and ignore the cultural characteristics of the societies being addressed, and (4) Western human rights policy is characterised by double standards. German officials should be aware of these objections and counter them proactively when they engage in dialogue on human rights. Above all, the German government should engage the accusations of cultural imperialism and double standards, not least because these beliefs are widespread among the populations of Arab countries. To counterbalance these accusations, the universal claim of human rights should be emphasised more strongly - especially in the context of a feminist foreign policy. Additionally, self-interests that potentially undermine the proclaimed values-based approach should be identified and articulated more clearly. Finally, the dialogue on human rights should be underpinned by concrete measures. (author's abstract

Semantic Matchmaking of Web Resources with Local Closed-World Reasoning

Ontology languages like OWL allow for semantically rich annotation of resources (e.g., products advertised at on-line electronic marketplaces). The description logic (DL) formalism underlying OWL provides reasoning techniques that perform match-making on such annotations. This paper identifies peculiarities in the use of DL inferences for matchmaking that derive from OWL\u27s open-world semantics, analyzes local closed-world reasoning for its applicability to matchmaking, and investigates the suitability of two nonmonotonic extensions to DL, autoepistemic DLs and DLs with circumscription, for local closed-world reasoning in the matchmaking context. An elaborate example of an electronic marketplace for PC product catalogs from the e-commerce domain demonstrates how these formalisms can be used to realize such scenarios

A Human Development Index by Income Groups

human development, water, sanitation

Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level

There is well-known debate about the respective role of geography versus institutions in explaining the long term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot easily be controlled for. The innovation of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) was to address this last point by using settler morality as an instrument for endegenous institutions and found that this supported their line of reasoning. We believe there is value-added to consider this debate at the micro level within a country as particularly questions of parameter heterogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity are likely to be smaller than between countries. Hence, we examine the determinants of agricultural growth across villages on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi and find technology adoption to play a crucial role. We show that geography through its effects on migration and institutions is a valid instrument to establish the causal links between institutions and technology adoption as well as technology and agricultural growth. --Geography,land rights,migration,technology adoption,agricultural developement,Indonesia