Search results

This study aims to uncover the extent to which cultural traits may explain the puzzling international divergence in COVID-19 outcomes, and how those traits interact with state action to produce compliance with pandemic health policy.

A theoretical framework illustrates the surprising possibility that culture and state action may not reinforce each other but rather act as substitutes in eliciting anti-pandemic behavior. This possibility is tested empirically in two specifications: a cross-sectional regression that includes several novel COVID-related measures, and a panel model that controls for contemporaneous disease burden. Across these models, we use the measures of national culture developed by Hofstede (1984) and a newer metric developed by Schwartz (1990).

Individualism and egalitarianism have a positive effect on disease prevalence, while cultural heterogeneity was associated with a more robust public health response. Consistent with our model, we find that culture and state action served as substitutes in motivating compliance with COVID-19 policy.

The results of this study imply that culture and state interact in determining the effectiveness of public health measures aimed at combating COVID-19; these results recommend culturally aware state intervention when combating pandemics.

This study offers several new contributions. First, it proposes a model to help contextualize the empirical analysis. Second, it examines a wider range of traits than previous studies, including cultural homogeneity and the Schwartz variables. Third, it employs a richer econometric specification that explores the interaction between state and culture in a panel context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of culture, legal origin and religion on four measures of the ease of starting a new business; the number of procedures required, the number days required, the ease of getting credit and the cost to start a business.

The authors use linear regression to test the hypotheses using publicly available data on legal origin and religion from La Porta et al. (1999), cultural dimension information from Hofstede (2009) and measures of the ease of starting a business from the World Bank’s (2017) Doing Business Initiative. The final sample consists of 71 countries for which information was available on all the variables of interest.

Legal origin affects the number of procedures and the length of time needed to start a business, as well as the ease of getting credit. Culture (power distance) and religion are important for explaining gender differences in the ease of starting a business. The cost of starting a business is unrelated to culture, legal origin or religion.

Economic development is an important determinant of a country’s political stability and standard of living. Although politicians play a significant role in how a friendly a country is toward business, the study demonstrates that other longer-term and less dynamic factors have a material influence on economic development.

We proposed a model in which culture plays a dominant role, along with religion and legal origin, in determining the quality of governance in a country. We examined four dimensions of culture and four measurements of governance quality across 71 countries. Our empirical results demonstrated the dominant role played by culture, over and above religion and legal origin, in explaining governance quality. As culture is persistent and unlikely to be easily changed, efforts to improve governance quality might be doomed to failure in nations with cultural values that are hostile to good governance.

Output per worker varies significantly from one country to another. Why? Our analysis shows that differences in earnings opacity are important sources of this variation. Earnings opacity is a measure that reflects how little information there is in a firm's earnings number about its true, but unobservable, economic performance. According to our results, a high‐productivity country has the accounting quality associated with low earnings opacity. Results further suggest that the quality of accounting in general, and low earnings opacity in particular helps a country by stimulating the accumulation of human and physical capital and by raising its total factor productivity.

This study provides insight into the proportion of the variation across countries in the desirable outcomes of freedom and peace that can be accounted for using a set of national characteristics which are difficult, if not impossible, to change. The majority of prior studies in this area have utilized bivariate (correlational) analysis. While these studies have made important contributions to the field, they have not been able to disentangle the effects of other important national characteristics from the effect of culture on freedom and peace. Through our multivariate framework, we are able to shed light on the relative importance of these national characteristics in explaining the variation in freedom and peace across countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of broad cultural dimensions, as well as those of religion and legal origin, on countries’ economic freedom, i.e., trade freedom, investment freedom, business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom, as well as a composite measure of economic freedom.

Linear regression of publicly available data regarding economic freedom (Miller et al., 2018) on cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2009), legal origin and religion (LaPorta et al., 1999) for 52 countries was performed to determine the impact of these factors on economic freedom.

Results indicated femininity was the cultural dimension associated with the most measures of economic freedom. Short-term-oriented cultures were predictive of greater business freedom, while more restrained cultures were associated with greater business and monetary freedoms. Higher individualism was predictive of greater monetary freedom. Catholicism positively predicted investment freedom and negatively predicted business freedom. French civil law negatively predicted labor freedom, while socialist legal origins positively predicted trade freedom, but negatively predicted business freedom.

This is the first study to examine the impacts of culture, law and religion on economic freedom. One practical implication of this research is that countries would be wise to emphasize more feminine aspects in their cultures, as these are associated with greater economic freedom. Even minor adjustments that move in the direction of cooperation and fair processes might help increase economic freedoms and the many benefits that stem from such freedoms.

Using a sample of 86 countries over the 1960–1999 period, this paper investigates the differential growth effects of ethnic division across cultural regions. While the evidence supports a negative relationship between ethnic fragmentation and economic growth, this relationship is significant only for Africa and Latin America. This study also uses a religious measure of ethnic fragmentation, and finds that religious diversity has a positive impact on growth. This impact, however, is present only in the Middle East and East Asia. Some possible reasons behind the heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity are also explored.

Diversity plays a vital role in the sustainable development of any country. Discrimination, segregation and bigotry are rampant causes of social evil and do great harm to our society. This study aims to investigate whether ethnic and religious diversity affects the country’s well-being or not, via a comparative analysis between developing and developed countries.

This study used a generalized method of moments technique for empirical analysis of 158 developing and developed countries. For measurement of ethnic and religious diversity, this study used ethnic fractionalization index of Alesina (2003).

The empirical findings indicate that ethnic and religious diversity both increases the economic prosperity for developed countries, and alternatively, it makes it more miserable for developing countries. This study suggests that organizing a diverse society is a difficult task; thus, developing countries need to promote a cohesive society like developed countries by providing equal, secure and peaceful opportunity to get fruitful results of diverse populations.

This study investigates a comparative analysis between developing and developed countries regarding impact of ethnic and religious diversity on economic development.

The paper addresses mainly three questions. One, do workers tend to be employed by employers of the same ethnic group; two, what is the structure of the equilibrium wage contract; and three, do more ethnically homogeneous labor markets tend to have different labor contracts than more ethnically diversified ones. The answer to the first question is in the affirmative – in equilibrium all employers offer the same wage contract and workers are hired by employers of the closest ethnic affiliation. In terms of the equilibrium wage contract, its nature depends on the attitude toward risk of both sides of the market. Finally, the answer to the third question is also in the affirmative since the more homogenous the labor market, the more deterministic is the wage.