We provide evidence that a tradition of village democracy is associated with the presence of national democracy today. We also show that a tradition of local democracy is associated with attitudes ...which are more supportive of democracy, with better quality institutions and with higher levels of economic development. Our findings indicate persistence in democratic institutions over time, and suggest the importance of traditional local institutions for well-functioning national-level institutions. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
FAMILY TIES AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Alesina, Alberto; Giuliano, Paola
Journal of the European Economic Association,
October 2011, Volume:
9, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We establish an inverse relationship between family ties and political participation, such that the more individuals rely on the family as a provider of services, insurance, and transfer of ...resources, the lower is one's civic engagement and political participation. We also show that strong family ties appear to be a substitute for generalized trust, rather than a complement to it. These three constructs—civic engagement, political participation, and trust—are part of what is known as social capital; therefore, in this paper, we contribute to the investigation of the origin and evolution of social capital. We establish these results using within-country evidence and looking at the behavior of immigrants from various countries in 32 different destination places.
Peter J. Richerson and Morten H. Christiansen have assembled a compelling picture of the evolution of societies, technology, language, and religion—with culture at the epicenter. The book is a ...must-have for economists and any other social scientists interested in the evolution of behavior. Using the book as a starting point, this article sums up what cultural evolution can teach us about these four major aspects of human behavior. Each topic is also linked to the relevant empirical research in economics. Directions for future research integrating cultural evolution into an economic framework are also explored.
We construct a database, with global coverage, that provides measures of the cultural and environmental characteristics of the pre-industrial ancestors of the world's current populations. In this ...paper, we describe the construction of the database, including the underlying data, the procedure to produce the estimates, and the structure of the final data. We then provide illustrations of some of the variation in the data and provide an illustration of how the data can be used.
Nation-Building and Education Alesina, Alberto; Giuliano, Paola; Reich, Bryony
The Economic journal (London),
08/2021, Volume:
131, Issue:
638
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Abstract
Democracies and dictatorships have different incentives when it comes to choosing how much and by what means to homogenise the population, i.e., ‘to build a nation’. We study and compare ...nation-building policies under the transition from dictatorship to democracy in a model where the type of government and borders of the country are endogenous. We find that the threat of democratisation provides the strongest incentive to homogenise. We focus upon a specific nation-building policy: mass primary education. We offer historical discussions of nation-building across time and space, and provide correlations for a large sample of countries over the 1925–2014 period.
One of the most disturbing noise for passengers is related to the engine fan. This noise is mainly tonal and in the low-frequency range. Reducing its impact for the comfort of passengers is an ...important and challenging issue in aeronautics. One suitable way to reduce cabin noise is to use efficient thermal acoustic insulation blankets between the interior trim panel and the exterior shell. General Aviation Aircrafts, are generally equipped with a cabin poorly efficient both in terms of thermal and acoustic insulation; this due mainly to the not availability of the most innovative solutions or materials like those used on Large Passenger Aircraft. In this context the authors have faced this crucial issue within SPAIN Project “Smart Panels for SAT Aircrafts Cabin Insulation” which makes part of the Systems Integrated Technology Demonstrator (ITD) Program in EU Clean Sky 2. This project aims scientific and technological breakthroughs in the development and validation of new insulation treatments used in aircraft developing a thermo-acoustic insulation system with materials and innovative solutions highly efficient at an affordable cost for this class of aircrafts. According to the available materials on the market with high thermal and acoustic individual performance, SPAIN goal is to design, develop and test an efficient insulation panel suitable for the General Aviation Aircraft compliant with the technical specification in terms of and weight to performance, and cost to performance aspects. Another item that has been strongly worked on, is the integration technology of this solution with the actual interiors configuration with specific focus to maintenance aspects. A set of sandwich configurations have been designed for each specific area of the fuselage to fulfil the overall noise level target; preliminary test have been performed at coupon level and sub-assembly level to confirm the expected outcomes.
Despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows, the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied. This paper studies one of the ...links between remittances and growth, in particular how local financial sector development influences a country's capacity to take advantage of remittances. Using a newly-constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries, we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints. This finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development, does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used, and is robust to a number of robustness tests, including threshold estimation. We also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population.
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