Theocharis N. Grigoriadis

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Freie Universität Berlin

Objective: In this study, we investigated Progressive Era public health interventions and connected two subsequent efforts to improve outcomes in the American South: the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission’s hookworm eradication efforts in the early 1910s and investments in local health infrastructure between the 1910s and the 1930s. We tested whether...

Competing definitions of justice in Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics indicate the existence of two distinct economic systems with different priorities. The three‐class society of the Platonic economy (guardians, auxiliaries, producers) gives rise to guardians who by virtue are expected to enforce output targets on producers directly or thr...

The population exchange of 1923 between Greece and Turkey consolidated the influx of more than 1.5 million refugees from Anatolia and East Thrace into Greece. In this article, we exploit the regional distribution of refugees at the sub-prefectural (province) level as a natural experiment in order to delineate the political effects of what the Greek...

In this paper, we explore the relationship between dialectal and cultural diversity and the effects of dialectal diversity on economic performance by drawing evidence from the Chinese Family Panel Study (CFPS) and Chinese prefecture-level cities. We find that dialectal diversity is a proxy for cultural diversity in China. We compute five indices of...

We explore the effects of Libya's administrative division into Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan on the onset of the Libyan conflict. We argue that Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, in particular, followed two different and distinct paths of political development and socioeconomic transformation. While Tripolitania and its elites are connected to the c...

Resource-rich dictatorships are more inclined to repress civil society than others. In this paper, we analyze the collapse and persistence of authoritarian regimes in terms of oil price shocks and the organizational density of civil society. This organizational density indicates the ability of citizens to credibly threaten the dictator with a revol...

This paper explores the impact of antiquity on capitalism through the finance-growth nexus. We define antiquity as the length of established statehood (i.e., state history) and agricultural years. We argue that extractive institutions and deeply entrenched interest groups may prevail in societies with ancient roots. The paper offers an in-depth ana...

In this paper, we examine the economic and political effects of the breakup of East Prussia into what is today Poland, Russia and Lithuania. We explore the dissolution of imperial regions into the boundaries of modern states, adding new insights to the research on the imperial legacies. We expect that German imperial legacies in the form of advance...

This paper assesses the environmental and economic efficiency of thermal plants operating on fossil fuels in Pakistan using methods based on data envelopment analysis. Using the material balance principle, we find that cost- and carbon-efficient points can only be obtained simultaneously by switching to gas. However, under an assumption of variable...

In this paper, we argue that the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy announcements have generated significant spillover effects in Russia and Eastern Europe. The hypothesis is tested using OLS estimations of event-based regressions on monetary policy event dummies and seven financial variables in eleven East European countries including Russia. Ov...

In this paper, we explore the effects of India's federal structure on state-level fiscal responsibility. Drawing from a 1991–2018 dataset, we argue that higher levels of transfer and borrowing dependence (soft budget constraints) from the central government facilitate lower levels of fiscal responsibility by subnational governments. Our hypothesis...

In this paper, we analyze the growth effects of state history and financial development in transition economies. We show that accumulated experience with established statehood yields significant results and transforms the impact of finance on growth in East-Central Europe, Southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. State history as a proxy fo...

In this paper, we analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by proposing a proxy war model, where conflict lasts longer, but it is less costly than direct military confrontation. In proxy wars, Nash equilibria are realizable, but not always sustainable in the long-run. The consolidation level of the double principal–agent relationship predicts the c...

In this paper, we analyze the long-run effects of Western and Japanese imperial expansion on the survival of Confucian values in China and Taiwan. Mainland China and Taiwan had been under the rule of the Qing dynasty and shared the same culture and societal structure before the onset of imperial expansions in the mid-nineteenth century. We show tha...

This paper analyzes the political incentives of Kulturkampf and the implementation of secularization in imperial Prussia and republican Turkey. A game-theoretic model defining Kulturkampf as a static game between priests and the executive is proposed. The willingness of priests to accept the government’s offer and be transformed into bureaucratic e...

This project re-investigates the hookworm eradication efforts of the Rockefeller Foundation's Sanitary Commission (RSC) in the American South during the Progressive Era. The RSC worked to eradicate hookworm across 11 southern states between 1911 and 1915, efforts that have been linked to dramatic short-and long-term increases in human capital and l...

During the European financial crisis, the European Central Bank implemented a series of unconventional monetary policy measures. We argue that these programs lowered the bond yield spreads of Euro-area countries. This hypothesis is tested using pooled OLS estimations and two different datasets: monetary policy event dummies and the purchase volumes...

In this paper, I argue that religion matters for the provision of public goods. I identify three normative foundations of Eastern Orthodox monasticism with strong economic implications: 1. solidarity, 2. obedience, and 3. universal discipline. I propose a public goods game with a three-tier hierarchy, where these norms are modeled as treatments. Ob...

This paper exploits the introduction of the right of local initiatives in the German state of Bavaria in 1995 to study the fiscal effects of direct democracy. Our identification strategy combines difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity methods: we compare municipal expenditure and revenue between pre- and post-reform periods at popul...

With a particular interest for Southern Europe, this contribution develops a classification of obstacles to economic policy reforms. This classification covers approaches ranging from classical economics and political-economic explanations to more innovative explanations linked to behavioral economics. The subsequent part analyzes qualitatively and...

Weber considered the Protestant work ethic the foundation of modern capitalism. I extend Weber's theory by arguing that states with predominantly Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslim populations have had a stronger inclination toward underdevelopment and dictatorship than states with Protestant or Jewish majorities. This is the case because...

This chapter discusses the course of EU development aid to Russia and Eurasia after the completion of the TACIS Program in 2007. Russia’s emergence as a donor and the formation of Eurasian Economic Community (EurasEC) have shifted EU–Russian relations in the direction of competition rather than cooperation. Regional economic integration in the form...

This chapter analyzes aid effectiveness from the donor’s perspective. An aid contract is effective when the donor observes her preferred levels of economic cooperation and institutional change on the territory of the recipient. The distinction between reciprocal, normative, and just donors proposes three different types of aid effectiveness. The Br...

This chapter analyzes EU development aid as the new soft budget constraint in the former Soviet Union. Aid effectiveness is defined as contractual completeness. The collaboration between federal or subnational administrative bodies on the one hand and private businesses or civic organizations on the other produces a novel definition of sovereignty....

This chapter explores the effectiveness of EU development aid to the economies of the former Soviet Union under conditions of imperfect monitoring. The effect of development aid on economic growth and the role of the institutional environment in aid effectiveness are discussed in the light of recent literature. I model the delivery of EU developmen...

This book is the one of the first to address aid effectiveness as a political and comparative economics question. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition of its republics to market structures and more representative forms of government, the European Commission has recognized the necessity of a closer economic cooperation with Russ...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of EU development aid to the economies of the former Soviet Union under conditions of imperfect monitoring. Transnational sovereignty partnerships (TSPs) suggest a novel type of aid recipient and an institutional component of the TACIS program. TSPs are composed of distributive planners and developmental entrep...

What is the role of nuclear contracts in Russian foreign policy? This chapter analyzes the political economy of nuclear power regulation in Russia and its implications for Russian foreign policy when it comes to international cooperation in the advanced and the developing world. Complementarities between the civil and military uses of nuclear power...

In this paper, I test the effects of religious norms on the provision of public goods. My evidence is drawn from public goods experiments that I ran with regional bureaucrats in Tomsk and Novosibirsk, Russia. I introduce three treatments, which I define as degrees of Eastern Orthodox collectivist enforcement: 1. Solidarity, 2. Obedience, and 3. Uni...

In this paper I argue that religion matters for the emergence of democracies and dictatorships. Religion is defined as a stochastically set demand for public goods. Different types of religious collectives reflect different tradeoffs between centralized resource distribution and market rewards. Religions are defined as collectivist, when their resp...

This article analyses aid effectiveness from the donor's perspective. An aid contract is effective for the donor when she is able to observe her required levels of trade and institutional change on the territory of the recipient. The distinction between reciprocal, normative and just donors indicates three different approaches to aid effectiveness....

Socio-economic justice lies in the normative core of Islam. The concepts of fard-al-kifayah and zakah reveal its commitment to protect the poor from the arbitrariness of the rich and treat the state as an institution that maximises collective welfare. The political economy of Safavid Iran indicates that the establishment of Islam as Iran's state re...

This paper exploits the introduction of the right of referenda at the local level in the German state of Bavaria in 1995 to study the fiscal effects of direct democracy. In the first part of the paper, we establish the relationship between referenda activity and fiscal performance by using a new dataset containing information on all 2500 voter init...

Aid effectiveness is defined as contractual completeness. EU development aid constitutes the new soft budget constraint in the former Soviet Union. Transnational sovereignty means that development policy is decided by the post-Soviet planner and financed by the European Commission.

In this article we introduce the term "energy polarization" to explain the politics of energy market reform in the Russian Duma. Our model tests the impact of regional energy production, party cohesion and ideology, and electoral mandate on the energy policy decisions of the Duma deputies (oil, gas, and electricity bills and resolution proposals) b...

In this article we introduce the term “energy polarization” to explain the politics of energy market reform in the Russian Duma. Our model tests the impact of regional energy production, party cohesion and ideology, and electoral mandate on the energy policy decisions of the Duma deputies (oil, gas, and electricity bills and resolution proposals) b...

This paper analyzes state responsibility and antitrust as conflicting forces of investment protection under the Energy Charter Treaty. State responsibility is defined in Art. 22 and 23; it imposes a strict liability rule and reinforces the role of government in the conclusion of energy investment contracts. This phenomenon is what I call the social...

This article investigates the relative impact of regional energy production on the energy voting choices of State Duma deputies between 1994 and 2003, controlling for other factors such as party affiliation, electoral mandate, committee membership and socio-demographic parameters. We apply Poole’s optimal classification method of roll call votes us...

This paper investigates the relative impact of regional energy production on the legislative choices of Russian Duma deputies on energy regulation between 1994 and 2003. We apply Poole’s optimal classification method of roll call votes using an ordered probit model to explain energy law reform in the first decade of Russia’s democratic transition....

This paper investigates the role of the State Duma of Russia in energy regulation between 1994 and 2003. We applying Poole’s optimal classification model of roll call votes using an ordered probit model to show impact of partisan, bureaucratic, social and economic determinants on energy law reform in the first decade of Russia’s democratic transiti...

This paper argues that religious norms matter for the economic nature and transformation of political regimes. Religion is defined as a commitment device between the leader and his selectorate. More collectivist religions require a higher threshold of public goods provision by the government. In the collectivism-individualism continuum, Islam is tr...

The paper analyzes the political economy of nuclear power in Russia and France from a social justice perspective. While Russia prioritizes national security over environmental safety, France follows the inverse order of policy priorities. Nuclear innovation defines the ability of any state to provide efficiently public goods and implement redistrib...

Цель этой статьи состоит в том, чтобы определить эффективность помощи как проблему агентства-донора. Национальные и наднациональные административные агентства предлагают отдельные типы систем помощи, которые приводят к различным определениям эффективности помощи. Доноры могут быть взаимными, нормативными или справедливыми; Великобритания, Германия...