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On the Ethnic Origins of African Development Chiefs and Pre-colonial Political Centralization

Michalopoulos, Stelios; Papaioannou, Elias - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

We report on recent findings of a fruitful research agenda that explores the importance of ethnic-specific traits in shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals identify with their ethnic group as often as with the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951097

Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets

Miguel, Edward Andrew; Fisman, Raymond - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006

Corruption is believed to be a major factor impeding economic development, but the importance of legal enforcement versus cultural norms in controlling corruption is poorly understood. To disentangle these two factors, we exploit a natural experiment, the stationing of thousands of diplomats...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005720647

Laws and Norms

Benabou, Roland; Tirole, Jean - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2011

This paper analyzes how private decisions and public policies are shaped by personal and societal preferences ("values"), material or other explicit incentives ("laws") and social sanctions or rewards ("norms"). It first examines how honor, stigma and social norms arise from individuals'...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009359908

Empirics of Strategic Interdependence: The Case of the Racial Tipping Point

Easterly, William - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2009

The Schelling model of a "tipping point" in racial segregation, in which whites flee a neighborhood once a threshold of nonwhites is reached, is a canonical model of strategic interdependence. The idea of "tipping" explaining segregation is widely accepted in the academic literature and popular...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10004980318

Linear Social Interactions Models

Brock, William A.; Durlauf, Steven N.; Blume, Lawrence E.; … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social interactions models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise as the analysis is linked to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop an incomplete information game that...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010821675

Social Structure and Institutional Design: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field

Breza, Emily; Chandrasekhar, Arun G.; Larreguy, Horacio - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

In settings with poor formal contract enforcement, profitable investments are likely unrealized. While social closeness can mitigate contractual incompleteness, we examine how to improve the preponderance of cases where contracting parties cannot rely upon social ties. We ask if a community can...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010821816

Migration to the US and Marital Mobility

Christopoulou, Rebekka; Lillard, Dean R. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2013

We combine survey data on British and German immigrants in the US with data on natives in Britain and Germany to estimate the causal effect of migration on educational mobility through cross-national marriage. To control for selective mating, we instrument educational attainment using government...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010821899

How Durable are Social Norms? Immigrant Trust and Generosity in 132 Countries

Helliwell, John F.; Wang, Shun; Xu, Jinwen - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

This paper estimates the global prevalence of social trust and generosity among immigrants. We combine individual and … World Poll (2005-2012). The results show that the effect of source country social trust is about one-third as large as that … from trust levels in the destination countries where the migrant now lives. Migrants from low-trust environments are …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010796593

Tractable and Consistent Random Graph Models

Jackson, Matthew O.; Chandrasekhar, Arun G. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

We define a general class of network formation models, Statistical Exponential Random Graph Models (SERGMs), that nest standard exponential random graph models (ERGMs) as a special case. We provide the first general results on when these models' (including ERGMs) parameters estimated from the...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010796660

Powerful Independent Directors

Morck, Randall; Fogel, Kathy; Ma, Liping - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

Shareholder valuations are economically and statistically positively correlated with more powerful independent directors, their power gauged by social network power centrality measures. Sudden deaths of powerful independent directors significantly reduce shareholder value, consistent with...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010951070