Suchergebnisse

Despite the large amount of private and public resources spent on foreign education, there is no systematic evidence that foreign-educated individuals foster democracy in their home countries. Using a unique panel dataset on foreign students starting in the 1950s, I show that foreign-educated individuals promote democracy in their home country, but only if the foreign education is acquired in democratic countries. The results are robust to several estimation techniques, to different definitions of democracy, and to the inclusion of a variety of control variables, including democracy in trading partners, neighboring countries, level of income, and level and stock of education. (JEL D72, I21, O15, O17, P26)

Do generations growing up during recessions have different socio-economic beliefs than generations growing up in good times? We study the relationship between recessions and beliefs by matching macroeconomic shocks during early adulthood with self-reported answers from the General Social Survey. Using time and regional variations in macroeconomic conditions to identify the effect of recessions on beliefs, we show that individuals growing up during recessions tend to believe that success in life depends more on luck than on effort, support more government redistribution, but are less confident in public institutions. Moreover, we find that recessions have a long-lasting effect on individuals' beliefs.

AbstractAn uneven distribution of natural resources and the Soviet legacy of artificial regional specialization expose Russia's regions to large income shocks. Using an unique regional dataset covering Russian regions between 1992 and 2003, we assess how these features influence the magnitude and persistence of regional income shocks. We propose a novel measure of regional exogenous shocks that we use to show that fiscal policy in Russia's regions has largely been pro‐cyclical, exacerbating rather than moderating regional exogenous shocks.