Institutions and Economics

Although often ignored, religion has profoundly shaped political and economic conditions around the world. This claim is suggested by three historical divergences: (1) a divergence between Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim regions of Europe (these differences emerged after the Reformation and began to dissipate only after World War II) (Young 2009); (2) a divergence between Protestant and Catholic settler colonies in Oceania and the Americas; and (3) a divergence between the impacts of Protestant and Catholic missionaries on societies throughout the global South prior to Vatican II (which ended in 1965). Discussions of the influence of religion in Europe have been stymied because it is difficult to disentangle religious and nonreligious causes. in this chapter I argue that both in Europe and in the global South, thus I use the Protestant and Catholic missionary movement as a quasi-natural experiment.
      I argue that both in Europe and in the global South, Protestants shaped human capital development (mass education and mass printing) and institutional development (civil society, colonial rule of law, and market economics)—especially prior to the 1960s. Together these shaped elites’ incentives and thus long-term prospects for economic development and political democracy. Other groups have copied many Protestant patterns (e.g., the Catholic Church in Vatican II [1965]), and thus differences are dissipating, but the historic pattern is clear.

The resonance of Acemoglu and Robinson’s book Why Nations Fail has been very wide in economics, whereas the impact for political science has been less pronounced. Actually, the book proposes a broad theory of economic growth, but it provides (at least partially) a political explanation for this phenomenon. For these reasons, the book can be read (also) from a political science viewpoint. Its importance for the discipline lies in its focus on political institutional change and the role that political institutions play in shaping economic outputs. By dealing with political institutions and political stability, the book follows an established path of studies in political science, such as Huntington and Fukuyama’s works on political order. This article seeks to reread critically Why Nations Fail from a politological perspective through these lenses. It will be shown how Acemoglu and Robinson’s proposal could further benefit, in terms of conceptual and theoretical clarity as well as explanatory strength, from an integration of its arguments with some politological literature

Director de tesis: Carlos Álvarez Nogal (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid). Miembros del tribunal: Carmen Sanz Ayán (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Regina Grafe (European University Institute) y Manuel Herrero Sánchez (Universidad Pablo de Olavide).

This paper suggests that the problem of socialist calculation be reconsidered as a subset of the problem of policy choice, where a large and growing literature outlines the importance of normative and public choice considerations, and for analysis that goes beyond the limited confines of the ‘new’ welfare economics. Formulation of viable socialist models calls for an interdisciplinary socialist welfare economics, comprising; (1) ethical analysis of the proper social objective function; (2) construction of normatively grounded indicators to measure policy performance; (3) analysis of policy options best suited to maximising the objective function; (4) political economic analysis of the institutions best suited to ensuring that actual policy choices conform to those recommended by (3). The paper then makes a case for a neo–utilitarian approach on two grounds; firstly a utilitarian social welfare function (SWF) is well supported philosophically, and approximates for many policy questions popular alternative welfarist SWF (priority, egalitarianism). Secondly, welfarism provides a unitary indicator of social improvement, mitigating the requirement for arbitrary decisions by planners. In a complex economy the scope for direct democracy is limited - hence the case for formal, welfarist policy assessment criteria. Socialist policy formation would then be a subset of a broader problem of constrained maximisation of welfarist SWF, where insights from all relevant fields (moral philosophy, economics, public health, psychology, sociology, political economy) are incorporated. The particularly socialist subset of this discipline would limit investigation of local optima defined by (1) high socialisation of investment and (2) low consumption inequality.

In most developed countries the gender gap is nearly closing in the health and educational spheres while there is still sizeable gender inequality in the economic and political dimensions. Why do women’s economic decision-making and political empowerment vary so widely? What are the main potential determinants of such variations? In this paper we explore the association between two specific facets of women’s empowerment, the percentage of women holding office in local political bodies and the percentage of women in high-ranking jobs, with the cultural environment in which women make their career decisions. Our hypothesis is that culture, in particular those values embodied by religious culture, plays a central role in shaping norms and beliefs about the role and involvement of women in society. Moreover we suggest that these cultural norms are inherited from the past and therefore have a high degree of inertia. Over a cross section of Italian provincial data, both OLS and IV results...

In most developed countries the gender gap is nearly closing in the health and educational spheres while there is still sizeable gender inequality in the economic and political dimensions. Why do women’s economic decision-making and political empowerment vary so widely? What are the main potential determinants of such variations? In this paper we explore the association between two specific facets of women’s empowerment, the percentage of women holding office in local political bodies and the percentage of women in high-ranking jobs, with the cultural environment in which women make their career decisions. Our hypothesis is that culture, in particular those values embodied by religious culture, plays a central role in shaping norms and beliefs about the role and involvement of women in society. Moreover we suggest that these cultural norms are inherited from the past and therefore have a high degree of inertia. Over a cross section of Italian provincial data, both OLS and IV results indicate that our measures of women’s empowerment are strongly associated with religious culture, as proxied by religious marriages. These results are robust and consistent across specifications.