No abstract

Religious beliefs potentially influence individual behaviour. But why are some societies more religious than others? One possible answer is religious coping: individuals turn to religion to deal with unbearable and unpredictable life events. To investigate whether coping can explain global differences in religiosity, I combine a global dataset on individual-level religiosity with spatial data on natural disasters. Individuals become more religious if an earthquake recently hit close by. Even though the effect decreases after a while, data on children of immigrants reveal a persistent effect across generations. The results point to religious coping as the main mediating channel, but alternative explanations such as mutual insurance or migration cannot be ruled out entirely. The findings may help explain why religiosity has not vanished as some scholars once predicted.

The Internet is often claimed to be a powerful anti-corruption technology. In theory, the Internet raises information levels and thus detection risks. Further, by enabling e-government, it obviates bureaucrats' intermediary role in the provision of public services and increases transparency. To examine the Internet/corruption nexus empirically, we develop a novel identification strategy for Internet diffusion. Power disruptions damage digital equipment, which increases the user cost of IT capital and thus lowers the speed of Internet diffusion. A natural phenomenon causing power disruptions is lightning activity, which makes lightning a viable instrument for Internet diffusion. Using global satellite data and data from ground-based lightning detection censors, we construct lightning density data for a large cross section of countries and for the contiguous U.S. states. Empirically, lightning density is a strong instrument for Internet diffusion. Our IV estimates show that Internet diffusion has reduced the extent of corruption across countries and across U.S. states.

We hypothesize that cultural appreciation of hard work and thrift, the Protestant ethic according to Max Weber, had a pre-Reformation origin. The proximate source of these values was, according to the proposed theory, the Catholic Order of Cistercians. In support, we first document an impact from the Order on growth within the epicenter of the industrial revolution; English counties that were more exposed to Cistercian monasteries experienced faster productivity growth from the 13th century onwards.Consistent with a cultural influence, this impact is also found after the monasteries were dissolved in the 1530s. Second, we find that the values emphasized by Weber are relatively more pervasive in European regions where Cistercian monasteries were located historically, and that the legacy of the Cistercians can be detected in present-day employment rates across European sub-regions.

History, not predictions of CGE models or crosscountry growth studies, shows a strong relationship between trade and development. Vietnam's experience with bilateral trade agreements, comparing actual outcomes with predictions from existing models, demonstrates this and the limitations of research methodologies. Forecasts for Vietnam greatly underestimated the impact of past agreements because tariff reform was not the main factor driving adjustments. Addressing market imperfections through institutional reform was central to bringing output and trade expansion. Key questions for future research are: whether policy reform will result in new institutional changes, and how resulting incentives determine the evolution of investment by sector.