Institutional Persistence in Eastern Europe: Economic and Political Legacies of Empires and Communism

This dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of the roles that institutions play in economic development. How do institutions evolve? What mechanisms are responsible for their persistence? What effects do they have on economic development?

I address these questions using historical and contemporary data from Eastern Europe and Russia. This area is relatively understudied by development economists. It also has a very interesting history. For one thing, for several centuries it was divided between different empires. For another, it experienced wars and socialism in the 20th century. I use some of these exogenous shocks as quasi-natural social experiments to study the institutional transformations and its effects on economic development both in the short and long run.

This first chapter explores whether economic, social, and political institutions vary in their resistance to policies designed to remove them. The empirical context for the analysis is Romania from 1690 to the 2000s. Romania represents an excellent laboratory for studying the persistence of different types of historical institutional legacies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Romania was split between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, where political and economic institutions differed. The Habsburgs imposed less extractive institutions relative to the Ottomans: stronger rule of law, a more stable and predictable state, a more developed civil society, and less corruption. In the 20th century, the Romanian Communist regime tried deliberately to homogenize the country along all relevant dimensions. It was only partially successful. Using a regression discontinuity design, I document the persistence of economic outcomes, social capital, and political attitudes. First, I document remarkable convergence in urbanization, education, unemployment, and income between the two former empires. Second, regarding social capital, no significant differences in organizational membership, trust in bureaucracy, and corruption persist today. Finally, even though the Communists tried to change all political attitudes, significant discontinuities exist in current voting behavior at the former Habsburg-Ottoman border. Using data from the parliamentary elections of 1996-2008, I find that former Habsburg rule decreases by around 6 percentage points the vote share of the major post-Communist left party and increases by around 2 and 5 percentage points the vote shares of the main anti-Communist and liberal parties, respectively.

The second chapter investigates the effects of Stalin’s mass deportations on distrust in central authority. Four deported ethnic groups were not rehabilitated after Stalin’s death; they remained in permanent exile until the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This allows one to distinguish between the effects of the groups that returned to their homelands and those of the groups that were not allowed to return. Using regional data from the 1991 referendum on the future of the Soviet Union, I find that deportations have a negative interim effect on trust in central authority in both the regions of destination and those of origin. The effect is stronger for ethnic groups that remained in permanent exile in the destination regions. Using data from the Life in Transition Survey, the chapter also documents a long-term effect of deportations in the destination regions.

The third chapter studies the short-term effect of Russian colonization of Central Asia on economic development. I use data on the regions of origin of Russian settlers and push factors to construct an instrument for Russian migration to Central Asia. This instrument allows me to interpret the outcomes causally. The main finding is that the massive influx of Russians into the region during the 1897-1926 period had a significant positive effect on indigenous literacy. The effect is stronger for men and in rural areas. Evidently, interactions between natives and Russians through the paid labor market was an important mechanism of human capital transmission in the context of colonization.

The findings of these chapters provide additional evidence that history and institutions do matter for economic development. Moreover, the dissertation also illuminates the relative persistence of institutions. In particular, political and social capital legacies of institutions might outlast economic legacies. I find that most economic differences between the former empires in Romania have disappeared. By the same token, there are significant discontinuities in political outcomes. People in former Habsburg Romania provide greater support for liberalization, privatization, and market economy, whereas voters in Ottoman Romania vote more for redistribution and government control over the economy.

In the former Soviet Union, Stalin’s deportations during World War II have a long-term negative effect on social capital. Today’s residents of the destination regions of deportations show significantly lower levels of trust in central authority. This is despite the fact that the Communist regime tried to eliminate any source of opposition and used propaganda to homogenize people’s political and social attitudes towards the authorities. In Central Asia, the influx of Russian settlers had a positive short-term effect on human capital of indigenous population by the 1920s, which also might have persisted over time.

From a development perspective, these findings stress the importance of institutions for future paths of development. Even if past institutional differences are not apparent for a certain period of time, as was the case with the former Communist countries, they can polarize society later on, hampering economic development in the long run. Different institutions in the past, which do not exist anymore, can thus contribute to current political instability and animosity.

When Consumption Embraces Faith: How Religious Beliefs and Practices Influence Consumption

Marketers have long looked for observables that could explain differences in consumer behavior. Initial attempts have centered on demographic factors, such as age, gender, and race. Although such variables are able to provide some useful information for segmentation (Bass, Tigert, and Longdale 1968), more recent studies have shown that variables that tap into consumers’ social classes and personal values have more predictive accuracy and also provide deeper insights into consumer behavior. I argue that one demographic construct, religion, merits further consideration as a factor that has a profound impact on consumer behavior. In this dissertation, I focus on two types of religious guidance that may influence consumer behaviors: religious teachings (being content with one’s belongings), and religious problem-solving styles (reliance on God).

Essay 1 focuses on the well-established endowment effect and introduces a new moderator (religious teachings on contentment) that influences both owner and buyers’ pricing behaviors. Through fifteen experiments, I demonstrate that when people are primed with religion or characterized by stronger religious beliefs, they tend to value their belongings more than people who are not primed with religion or who have weaker religious beliefs. These effects are caused by religious teachings on being content with one’s belongings, which lead to the overvaluation of one’s own possessions.

Essay 2 focuses on self-control behaviors, specifically healthy eating, and introduces a new moderator (God’s role in the decision-making process) that determines the relationship between religiosity and the healthiness of food choices. My findings demonstrate that consumers who indicate that they defer to God in their decision-making make unhealthier food choices as their religiosity increases. The opposite is true for consumers who rely entirely on themselves. Importantly, this relationship is mediated by the consumer’s consideration of future consequences. This essay provides an explanation to the existing mixed findings on the relationship between religiosity and obesity.

Relative growth of the limbs and trunk in sifakas: heterochronic, ecological, and functional considerations.

Limb, trunk, and body weight measurements were obtained for growth series of Milne-Edwards's diademed sifaka, Propithecus diadema edwardsi, and the golden-crowned sifaka, Propithecus tattersalli. Similar measures were obtained also for primarily adults of two subspecies of the western sifaka: Propithecus verreauxi coquereli, Coquerel's sifaka, and Propithecus verreauxi verreauxi, Verreaux's sifaka. Ontogenetic series for the larger-bodied P. d. edwardsi and the smaller-bodied P. tattersalli were compared to evaluate whether species-level differences in body proportions result from the differential extension of common patterns of relative growth. In bivariate plots, both subspecies of P. verreauxi were included to examine whether these taxa also lie along a growth trajectory common to all sifakas. Analyses of the data indicate that postcranial proportions for sifakas are ontogenetically scaled, much as demonstrated previously with cranial dimensions for all three species (Ravosa, 1992). As such, P. d. edwardsi apparently develops larger overall size primarily by growing at a faster rate, but not for a longer duration of time, than P. tattersalli and P. verreauxi; this is similar to results based on cranial data. A consideration of Malagasy lemur ecology suggests that regional differences in forage quality and resource availability have strongly influenced the evolutionary development of body-size variation in sifakas. On one hand, the rainforest environment of P. d. edwardsi imposes greater selective pressures for larger body size than the dry-forest environment of P. tattersalli and P. v. coquereli, or the semi-arid climate of P. v. verreauxi. On the other hand, as progressively smaller-bodied adult sifakas are located in the east, west, and northwest, this apparently supports suggestions that adult body size is set by dry-season constraints on food quality and distribution (i.e., smaller taxa are located in more seasonal habitats such as the west and northeast). Moreover, the fact that body-size differentiation occurs primarily via differences in growth rate is also due apparently to differences in resource seasonality (and juvenile mortality risk in turn) between the eastern rainforest and the more temperate northeast and west. Most scaling coefficients for both arm and leg growth range from slight negative allometry to slight positive allometry. Given the low intermembral index for sifakas, which is also an adaptation for propulsive hindlimb-dominated jumping, this suggests that differences in adult limb proportions are largely set prenatally rather than being achieved via higher rates of postnatal hindlimb growth.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Diasporic Agents and Trans-Asian Flows in the Making of Asian Modernity: The Case of Thailand

How do our everyday actions shape and transform the world economy? This volume of original essays argues that current scholarship in international political economy (IPE) is too highly focused on powerful states and large international institutions. The contributors examine specific forms of â everyday' actions to demonstrate how small-scale actors and their decisions can shape the global economy. They analyse a range of seemingly ordinary or subordinate actors, including peasants, working classes and trade unions, lower-middle and middle classes, female migrant labourers and Eastern diasporas, and examine how they have agency in transforming their political and economic environments. This book offers a novel way of thinking about everyday forms of change across a range of topical issues including globalisation, international finance, trade, taxation, consumerism, labour rights and regimes. It will appeal to students and scholars of politics, international relations, political economy and sociology.

Rain dances in the dry season: overcoming the religious congruence fallacy

Religious congruence refers to consistency among an individual’s religious beliefs and attitudes, consistency between religious ideas and behavior, and religious ideas, identities, or schemas that are chronically salient and accessible to individuals across contexts and situations. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research establish that religious congruence is rare, but much thinking about religion presumes that it is common. The religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence. I illustrate the ubiquity of religious incongruence, show how the religious congruence fallacy distorts thinking about religion, and outline an approach to help overcome the fallacy.

U-Pb geochronology of the Santa Cruz Formation (early Miocene) at the Río Bote and Río Santa Cruz (southernmost Patagonia, Argentina): Implications for the correlation of fossil vertebrate localities

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd.The early Miocene Santa Cruz Formation (SCF) in southern Patagonia hosts the Santacrucian South American Land Mammal Age (SALMA), whose age is known mainly from exposures along the Atlantic coast. Zircon U-Pb ages were obtained from intercalated tuffs from four inland sections of the SCF: 17.36 ± 0.63 Ma for the westernmost Río Bote locality, and 17.04 ± 0.55 Ma-16.32 ± 0.62 Ma for central Río Santa Cruz localities. All ages agree with the bounding age of underlying marine units and with equivalent strata in coastal exposures. New ages and available sedimentation rates imply time spans for each section of ~18.2 to 17.36 Ma for Río Bote and 17.45-15.63 Ma for central Río Santa Cruz (Burdigalian). These estimates support the view that deposition of the SCF began at western localities ~1 Ma earlier than at eastern localities, and that the central Río Santa Cruz localities expose the youngest SCF in southern Santa Cruz Province. Associated vertebrate faunas are consistent with our geochronologic synthesis, showing older (Notohippidian) taxa in western localities and younger (Santacrucian) taxa in central localities. The Notohippidian fauna (19.0-18.0 Ma) of the western localities is synchronous with Pinturan faunas (19.0-18.0 Ma), but older than Santacrucian faunas of the Río Santa Cruz (17.2-15.6 Ma) and coastal localities (18.0-16.2 Ma). The Santacrucian faunas of the central Río Santa Cruz localities temporally overlap Colloncuran (15.7 Ma), Friasian (16.5 Ma), and eastern Santacrucian faunas.

Inequality, the Welfare State, and Demographic Change

This dissertation is a three-part analysis examining how the welfare state in advanced Western democracies has responded to recent demographic changes. Specifically, this dissertation investigates two primary relationships, beginning with the influence of government spending on poverty. I analyze two at-risk populations in particular: immigrants and children of single mothers. Next, attention is turned to the influence of individual and environmental traits on preferences for social spending. I focus specifically on religiosity, religious beliefs and religious identity. I pool data from a number of international macro- and micro-data sources including the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), International Social Survey Program (ISSP), the World Bank Databank, and the OECD Databank. Analyses highlight the power of the welfare state to reduce poverty, but also the effectiveness of specific areas of spending focused on addressing new social risks. While previous research has touted the strength of the welfare state, my analyses highlight the need to consider new social risks and encourage closer attention to how social position affects preferences for the welfare state.