Sunlight, Disease, and Institutions

Ang, James B.; Fredriksson, Per G.; Nurhakim, Aqil Luqman bin; Tay, Emerlyn Huiwen

doi:10.1111/kykl.12174

Cited by 22 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…Finally, researchers could examine determinants of institutional volatility. Determinants of institutional quality focus on deep historical factors such as culture, climate, state antiquity, historical prevalence of diseases, and the strength of long‐run ultraviolet radiation exposure (Bjørnskov and Méon ; Davis ; Nikolaev and Salahodjaev ; Ang et al ; Gohmann ). Building from this literature may produce useful insights into why some countries experience more volatility than others.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Path of Reform: The Consequences of Institutional Volatility

Bolen¹,

Williamson²

2019

Kyklos

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Summary The new institutional literature widely acknowledges the benefits of growth‐enhancing institutions but rarely discusses the path of institutional reform. While good institutions stabilize the structure of exchange and decrease uncertainty in market transactions, institutional reform may involve institutional volatility. If institutional volatility increases uncertainty, it can mitigate the benefits of reform. Using a sample of 89 countries from 2000‐2015, this paper empirically examines the effects of institutional volatility on economic growth. We find that institutional volatility decreases economic growth, particularly during liberalization for countries with low quality institutions and low income. In fact, a one standard deviation increase in volatility decreases growth by about 0.50 percentage points. This finding is robust to multiple estimation techniques and omitted variable bias. Evidence is provided suggesting that this effect is partially mediated through volatility's impact on private investment. These results support prior works that policy makers should pursue economic freedom, but our work indicates they should do so along a stable reform path to maximize economic growth.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Path of Reform: The Consequences of Institutional Volatility

Bolen¹,

Williamson²

2019

Kyklos

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“…13 Nikolaev and Salahodjaev (2017) use the prevalence of infectious diseases as an instrument for cultural traits which in their turn affect institutions. In a similar vein, Ang et al (2018) argue that exposure to ultraviolet radiation causing eye diseases is also correlated with institutional quality.…”

Section: Sub-samples Of Nationsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Quality of Institutions and the Allocation of Talent: Cross‐National Evidence

Natkhov

Polishchuk

2019

Kyklos

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SUMMARY Strong institutions attract talent to productive activities, whereas weak ones raise the appeal of redistribution. We find a strong positive cross‐country association between the quality of institutions and graduation of university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. These findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models. We also demonstrate that institutions dominate other factors affecting the allocation of talent. Finally, we present direct evidence that (mis)allocation of talent between productive and unproductive activities driven by institutional quality explains the discrepancy between private and public returns to education.

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“…It is also worth noting that data on settler mortality are only available for former colonies, which constrains the feasible sample size considerably. Hence, I follow some recent contributions asserting that the intensity of ultraviolet radiation (UV) helps explain crosscountry differences in institutional quality, and employ UV as an alternative instrument to maintain the baseline sample size essentially for the purposes of comparison (Ang et al, 2018;Vu, 2019Vu, , 2020. 33 I report the results in column (2) of Table 8; these are broadly similar to 31 The findings in Table 7 also lend strong support to recent empirical studies documenting a positive effect of individualism on institutions, gender inequality and economic performance (see, e.g., Kyriacou, 2016;Gorodnichenko & Roland, 2017;Davis & Williamson, 2019).…”

Section: A Mechanism Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, the permanent risk of diseases also affects the early investment in obtaining human capital, resulting in fewer well-trained and competent bureaucrats who could focus on designing the rule of law. The prevalence of diseases in high UV regions also deters (historical) investment in cooperation by institutional building, and this is detrimental to modern institutional quality (Ang et al, 2018). those in column (1).…”

Section: A Mechanism Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Individualism and Climate Change Policies: International Evidence

2020

SSRN Journal

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This paper examines the extent to which the cultural dimension of individualismcollectivism matters for the stringency of climate change policies across the world. I postulate that individualistic societies are endowed with a better capacity to implement stringent climate change regulations compared with their collectivistic counterparts. This notion is tested using data for a world sample of up to 92 countries. To achieve causal inference, I isolate exogenous sources of variation in individualistic cultures, based on blood distance to the UK and historical pathogen prevalence. The results lend strong empirical support to my propositions. I also find evidence that individualism exerts a positive influence on the stringency of climate change policies through enhancing the quality of governance and female political presentation. To account for unobserved country-specific factors, I perform subnational analyses using data from the World Values Survey. The results indicate that survey participants with an orientation towards individualistic cultures tend to self-report positive attitudes to proenvironmental policies, which is consistent with the international evidence.

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Sunlight, Disease, and Institutions

Abstract: Lucas et al. (2008) identify high UV-R exposure as an underlying cause of a range of serious diseases, including several skin cancers and eye diseases.

Cited by 22 publications

References 81 publications

The Path of Reform: The Consequences of Institutional Volatility

The Path of Reform: The Consequences of Institutional Volatility

Quality of Institutions and the Allocation of Talent: Cross‐National Evidence

Individualism and Climate Change Policies: International Evidence

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