Culture

Question 1

What is the paper that explains culture and institutions?

• What is the research question
• What is the empirical design
• What are the results

Answer 1

• Michalapolous et al (2013)

Question:

Do traditional pre-colonial political structures and modern national institutions both shape long-run development outcomes?

Empirical design:
Use Murdock (1959) data
- As borders were randomly drawn two strategies are used:
1. Across countries within same ethnic group which uses RDD to isolate the effect of national institutions
2. Within countries compare different ethnic groups within the same country. Isolates the effect of traditional political organisation (culture), holding national institutions constant.
Control for geography

Results:
Traditional political centralisation (culture) has a significant positive effect on local development today

Also the institutions are statistically significant.

These cultures and institutions had a persistent impact on Africa.

Question 2

What are the culture papers on economic development?

Answer 2

• Does culture change the operation of institutions
• Michalapoulous et al (2013)
• Can culture be changed?
• Nunn and Wantchekon (2011)

Question 3

What paper speaks about how culture impacts economic development?

What is the research question?
What is the empirical design?
What are the results?

Answer 3

Nunn and Wantchekon (2011)

• Question
• Does historical exposure to the African slave trade explain lower trust among African individuals in communities today.
• Empirical design
• data: individual responses from Afrobarometer surveys
• slave export data by ethnic group
• ethnicity of each individuals today
  Strategy:
  Regress trust on slave trade exposure with controls
• IV approach of ditstance to coast
  -Movers analysis
• Results:
  Higher slave trade exposure leads to significantly lower trust levels today.
• Negative remains after controllling
  IV estimates confirm relationship
• Movers also show lower trust which imply that the relationship persists.

Question 4

What is a paper that shows the impact of culture on institutions?

Answer 4

Greif (1995)

How do cultural beliefs affect the development of economic institutions that support trade.

Empirical design
- Study Maghribi traders vs Genoese traders
- analyses historical documents
- Theoretical model:
build an economic framework on how culture led to different contract enforcement mechanisms
Key differences:
Maghribis - relied on collective punishment
Genoese: individual legal contracts

Results:
Culture shaped institutions
Different cultures led to different institutions
- culture can face different institutions even facing the same economic problems.

Question 5

What is a paper that speaks how corruption differs across countries?

Answer 5

• Research question:
• Does a person’s cultural background, specifically their home country’s norms affect their personal tendency to break rules.

Empirical design:
Data - Unpaid parking tickets issued to diplomats (NYC records)
Home country corruption measures
Additional controls

Regress unpaid tickets on a home country’s corruption level
Examine variation across countries
Study before and after strict enforcement began after 202
- Since all diplomats had the same legal settings (no punishment pre-2002)
Any differences in behaviour reflect cultural norms

• Results:
  Positive and statistically signficant relationship between home country corruption and unpaid parking violations
  moving from low corruption country to high corruption associated with 1.5/2 additional unpaid violations per diplomat per year.
  After the 2002 enforcement tightened the unpaid parking decreased.