The Role of Freedom, Growth and Religion in the Taste for Revolution

A fundamental issue for economists is what determines civil conflict. One unsettled question is the relative importance of political freedoms versus economic development. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data based on surveys of revolutionary preferences of 130,000 people living in 61 nations between 1980 and 1997. Controlling for personal characteristics, country and year fixed effects, more freedom and economic growth both reduce revolutionary support. Losing one level of freedom, equivalent to a shift from the US to Turkey, increases support for revolt by 4 percentage points. To reduce support by the same amount requires adding 14 percentage points on to the GDP growth rate. Being Muslim in a free country has no effect on the probability of supporting revolt compared to a non-religious person. However, being Muslim in a country that is not free increases it by 13 percentage points. Being Christian in a free country decreases the chance of supporting revolt by 4 percentage points, compared to a non-religious person, and in a not-free country by 1 percentage point.Conflict, freedom, development, growth, religion.

The Role of Freedom, Growth and Religion in the Taste for Revolution

A fundamental question about the determinants of civil conflict is the relative importance of political freedoms versus economic development. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data based on surveys of revolutionary tastes of 130,000 people living in 61 nations between 1981 and 1997. Controlling for personal characteristics, country and year fixed effects, more freedom and economic growth both reduce revolutionary support. Losing one level of freedom, equivalent to a shift from the US to Turkey, increases support for revolt by 4 percentage points. To reduce support by the same amount requires adding 14 percentage points onto the GDP growth rate. Being Muslim in a free country has no effect on the probability of supporting revolt compared to a non-religious person. However being Muslim in a country that is not free increases it by 13 percentage points. Being Christian in a free country decreases the chance of supporting revolt by 4 percentage points, compared to a non-religious person, and in a not-free country by 1 percentage point.revolution, freedom, development, growth, religion

Public attitudes to inflation and monetary policy

Inflation has been volatile in the past three years. This article examines how that has affected households’ attitudes to inflation and to monetary policy more generally. Some of the volatility in inflation has fed through to households’ perceptions of inflation, as measured by the Bank/GfK NOP survey. But inflation expectations have responded less than changes in perceptions: households may have placed weight on the weak economic environment and the inflation target rather than simply extrapolating past trends in prices. Public satisfaction with the Bank, which deteriorated between 2007 and 2009, has improved in recent quarters.

Understanding the price of new lending to households

During the recent financial crisis Bank Rate was reduced sharply, but in general the interest rates charged on new lending to households did not fall by as much and indeed some interest rates rose. This article assesses the factors that have influenced new lending rates using a simple decomposition of new lending rates into lenders’ funding costs, credit risk charges and a residual (which includes both operating costs and the mark-up). Applying the decomposition to two indicative lending products suggests that funding costs have been an important driver of new lending rates and the residual has also risen. The residual needs to be interpreted with caution — by definition it reflects all the remaining unmodelled factors. But among other things, a larger residual is consistent with lenders increasing mark-ups over marginal costs for new lending, which may reflect a need to build higher capital levels within the banking sector.

The financial position of British households: evidence from the 2010 NMG Consulting survey

The UK economy has begun to recover over the past year but households’ financial positions remain under strain. Elevated unemployment, weak earnings growth and restricted credit availability still pose a problem for some households. But the low level of Bank Rate has continued to bear down on mortgage interest payments for some borrowers. This article examines evidence from the latest survey of households carried out for the Bank by NMG Consulting in late September, which shows how these and other changes have affected households’ budgets and spending decisions. The burden of unsecured debt was higher than in the past and concerns about debt levels had increased, leading some to save more in order to reduce indebtedness. A special set of questions this year showed that households’ awareness of the fiscal consolidation measures was quite high. They were concerned about the impact on their finances, although the majority had yet to take any action in response.

The financial position of British households: evidence from the 2009 NMG survey

The severe recession of the past year might be expected to have put the financial position of British households under considerable strain. Unemployment has risen significantly, credit conditions have tightened and many homeowners have seen their housing equity eroded. But many borrowers have also benefited significantly from the effects of lower mortgage interest rates. Evidence from the latest survey of households, carried out for the Bank by NMG Financial Services Consulting in late September and early October, shows how these and other changes impacted on households’ budgets and their decisions on whether to spend or save. Despite the weak economic backdrop, a slightly smaller proportion of households reported problems repaying their debts than in the 2008 survey. Partly this was because around half of mortgagors had benefited from lower interest rates. Around a quarter of households had increased or planned to increase saving.

The Role of Freedom, Growth and Religion in the Taste for Revolution

Property rights, whose security is often threatened by civil conflict, are a necessary condition for the establishment of a market economy. Yet a fundamental and unresolved empirical question is whether the lack of political and civil freedoms is one of the root causes of greater insecurity. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data on the revolutionary tastes of 106,170 people in 61 nations between 1981 and 1997. Controlling for country effects, year effects and endogeneity, the level of freedom has strong and robust negative effects on revolutionary support. A one standard deviation rise in freedom, equivalent to a shift from Argentina to the US, decreases the support for a revolt by 3 percentage points, or 38% of the standard deviation of the proportion of people who want one. Higher GDP growth rates can buy off part of the increase in revolutionary support when freedoms are constrained. There is also evidence that being religious reduces revolutionary tastes although the size of the effect varies with the extent of freedom and disappears entirely in non-free nations.

The role of economic and institutional change in shaping social preferences

This thesis explores how economic and institutional changes shape social preferences, in particular attitudes of wellbeing and unrest. The first chapter explores whether the welfare of women increased following the extension of women's rights between the 1960s and 1990s in Europe. Using individual-level data on life satisfaction, it shows through differences-in-differences that the extension of birth control rights is strongly linked to an increase in the welfare of women of childbearing age, while mutual consent divorce and maternity benefits proved less beneficial. Birth control rights also increased women's investment in education, probability of working and income. The second chapter investigates whether the same link between individual rights and welfare holds in the context of India. Unlike in Europe, there is no strong evidence that abortion rights increased the wellbeing of women. Some positive association between rights and wellbeing is only found once the income, education and location of individuals are accounted for. The third and fourth chapters examine which political and economic factors lead individuals to revolt against their government, creating conflict and property rights insecurity. Two innovative empirical approaches are introduced. Chapter 3 analyses the revolutionary preferences of over 100,000 people in 61 countries between 1981 and 1997. It uses instrumental variables to control for the possible endogeneity of economic and political variables. It finds that restricting the level of political and civil freedom has a strong impact on revolutionary support, which economic growth can only partly compensate for. Chapter 4 examines the interaction of preferences for revolt and actions combining the analysis of survey data with a laboratory experiment. The findings are consistent with the collective action problem. The feeling by citizens that the government "operates in the interest of the few" increases both revolutionary preferences and actions; political repression increases preferences for revolt but decreases actual opposition

Lysosomal Proteomics Links Disturbances in Lipid Homeostasis and Sphingolipid Metabolism to CLN5 Disease

CLN5 disease (MIM: 256731) represents a rare late-infantile form of neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL), caused by mutations in the CLN5 gene that encodes the CLN5 protein (CLN5p), whose physiological roles stay unanswered. No cure is currently available for CLN5 patients and the opportunities for therapies are lagging. The role of lysosomes in the neuro-pathophysiology of CLN5 disease represents an important topic since lysosomal proteins are directly involved in the primary mechanisms of neuronal injury occurring in various NCL forms. We developed and implemented a lysosome-focused, label-free quantitative proteomics approach, followed by functional validations in both CLN5-knockout neuronal-like cell lines and Cln5−/− mice, to unravel affected pathways and modifying factors involved in this disease scenario. Our results revealed a key role of CLN5p in lipid homeostasis and sphingolipid metabolism and highlighted mutual NCL biomarkers scored with high lysosomal confidence. A newly generated cln5 knockdown zebrafish model recapitulated most of the pathological features seen in NCL disease. To translate the findings from in-vitro and preclinical models to patients, we evaluated whether two FDA-approved drugs promoting autophagy via TFEB activation or inhibition of the glucosylceramide synthase could modulate in-vitro ROS and lipid overproduction, as well as alter the locomotor phenotype in zebrafish. In summary, our data advance the general understanding of disease mechanisms and modifying factors in CLN5 disease, which are recurring in other NCL forms, also stimulating new pharmacological treatments