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December 2024
Sascha O. Becker of Monash University and University of Warwick reviews “The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People” by Paul Seabright. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Presents a platform model of religious movements, discussing how the competition for members and resources between such movements shapes what is possible for them and their political backers.”
September 2024
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23 Reads
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2 Citations
Journal of Economic Literature
We use the elements of a macroeconomic production function—physical capital, human capital, labor, and technology—together with standard growth models to frame the role of religion in economic growth. Unifying a growing literature, we argue that religion can enhance or impinge upon economic growth through all four elements because it shapes individual preferences, societal norms, and institutions. Religion affects physical capital accumulation by influencing thrift and financial development. It affects human capital through both religious and secular education. It affects population and labor by influencing work effort, fertility, and the demographic transition. And it affects total factor productivity by constraining or unleashing technological change and through rituals, legal institutions, political economy, and conflict. Synthesizing a disjoint literature in this way opens many interesting directions for future research. (JEL E22, I25, J10, N30, O33, O43, Z12)
August 2024
Labour Economics
July 2024
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5 Reads
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3 Citations
American Economic Journal Applied Economics
We study the role of professional networks in facilitating emigration of Jewish academics dismissed from their positions by the Nazi government. We use individual-level exogenous variation in the timing of dismissals to estimate causal effects. Academics with more ties to early émigrés (emigrated 1933–1934) were more likely to emigrate. Early émigrés functioned as “bridging nodes” that facilitated emigration to their own destination. We also provide evidence of decay in social ties over time and show that professional networks transmit information that is not publicly observable. Finally, we study the relative importance of three types (family, community, professional) of social networks. (JEL I31, J44, N34, N44, Z12, Z13)
May 2024
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2 Reads
October 2023
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10 Reads
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2 Citations
February 2023
February 2023
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99 Reads
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3 Citations
The spread of radical institutional change does not often result from one-sided pro-innovation influence; countervailing influence networks in support of the status quo can suppress adoption. We develop a model of multiple and competing network diffusion. To apply the contested-diffusion model to real data, we look at the contest between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the two most influential intellectuals of early 16th-century Central Europe. Whereas Luther championed a radical reform of the Western Church that broke with Rome, Erasmus opposed him, stressing the unity of the Church. In the early phase of the Reformation, these two figures utilized influence networks of followers, affecting which cities in the Holy Roman Empire adopted reform. Using newly digitalized data on both leaders’ correspondence networks, their travels, the dispersion of their followers, and parallel processes of exchange among places through trade routes, we employ econometric tests and network simulations to test our theoretical model. We find that Luther’s network is strongly associated with the spread of the Reformation and that Erasmus’s network is associated with the stifling of the Reformation. This is consistent with a “fire-fighting” mechanism of contested diffusion, whereby the countervailing force suppresses innovations only after they have begun to spread.
January 2023
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4 Reads
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1 Citation
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January 2023
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18 Reads
SSRN Electronic Journal
... Teachers, by teaching various types of courses, facilitate the interaction between different bodies of knowledge and the formation of knowledge networks. This process not only allows for the acquisition of necessary knowledge but also enhances personal qualities, thereby promoting the advancement of human civilization [12]. Secondly, education serves as a medium for the diffusion of knowledge. ...
July 2024
American Economic Journal Applied Economics
... Our sample of cities comes from Becker et al. (2023). This dataset includes larger towns and cities (those with a population estimated at 2,000+) in the de jure Holy Roman Empire (hereafter HRE) and its environs. ...
February 2023
... In the realm of Sharia insurance waqf, particularly in Indonesia following the issuance of Fatwa DSN-MUI No. 106 in 2016, Becker et al. (2021) highlight that Islamic waqf insurance has seen positive development and holds significant potential for the future. However, it is important to address both the conceptual and practical constraints that may impede its progress. ...
January 2021
... Forced displacement occurs when people are forced to leave their home due to 'persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order' [23] (p.2). When referring to forced displacement, Australian literature uses the terms refugee [24], asylumseeking [25], and forced migration [26]. Internationally, people seeking asylum have applied for refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention, and refugees are people who have been granted this status [27]. ...
January 2022
SSRN Electronic Journal
... La proximidad de Europa a regiones plagadas de conflictos, como el Medio Oriente y África del Norte, así como su estabilidad política y económica, la convierten en un destino atractivo para quienes buscan seguridad y oportunidades (Barras Tejudo, 2023; Estrada Villaseñor, 2023) (gráfico 7). Sin embargo, la crisis de Ucrania (Becker, 2022) ha revelado la necesidad de un enfoque más coordinado y solidario a nivel europeo y global, que vaya más allá de la gestión de fronteras y aborde las causas que están en la raíz del desplazamiento forzado y promueva el respeto del derecho internacional y los derechos humanos, asegurando una distribución justa de las responsabilidades entre los países (Gerlach y Ryndzak, 2022 La situación en Europa también ha reavivado el debate sobre la equidad en el tratamiento de los refugiados, destacando diferencias en la acogida según su origen geográfico o étnico, y ha enfatizado la importancia de preservar el derecho de asilo como un pilar fundamental de la protección internacional (ACNUR, 2024;Herrera Ceballos, 2023). ...
February 2022
Australian Economic History Review
... First, the expansion of female education (notably higher education) may directly or indirectly influence the TFR 23 . There are pervasive studies on the relationship between education and fertility, and they generally find that a higher education level negatively impacts fertility [24][25][26] . Directly, more schooling can postpone the age of marriage and childbearing; thus, the tempo effect will reduce the period fertility rate. ...
January 2011
SSRN Electronic Journal
... Consistent with unified growth theory, the author finds that children from smaller families were more likely to attend school, consistent with a trade-off between child quantity and child quality, and that remaining in school until between ages 14 and 16 reduced fertility by roughly one-quarter. Becker et al. (2010) use nineteenth-century Prussian data and use an IV strategy for educational attainment in order to create variation in the price of education (the price of quality) and fertility, and they demonstrate that there is a negative causal relationship in this regard. Relatedly, Murphy (2015) finds that education, and particularly that of females, played an important role in declining fertility in nineteenth century France, and presumably the growth pattern that followed, while Shiue (2017) finds that changes in a provincial civil service exam that increased the potential returns to the education of one's child in the seventeenth century led to households with fewer children being more likely to have at least one son take such an exam. ...
January 2010
SSRN Electronic Journal
... Historische empirische analyses van netwerken en (netwerk)corruptie in de context van de Nederlandse bestuurscultuur zijn er ook. Deze zijn relevant omdat (netwerk)corruptie diepe historische wortels heeft als cultureel verschijnsel (Becker et al., 2011;Kerkhoff et al., 2020;Kroeze et al., 2019;Mungiu-Pippidi, 2015;Treisman, 2000;Van der Meer & Raadschelders, 2003). Juist netwerkcorruptie is vanwege het belang van familiebanden, sociale netwerken, particularisme en reciprociteit (zie eerder) immers heel sterk gerelateerd aan de geschiedenis en cultuur van afzonderlijke landen (vgl. ...
January 2011
SSRN Electronic Journal
... Legacy research acknowledges the existence of multiple mechanisms by which the past may reverberate in current social, economic, and political realities. 23 Concerning human capital, the existing literature documents various instances where past educational developments leave a notable imprint on societies' present social development, including the level of human capital. In a recent article, Valencia Caicedo examines the enduring impact of the educational input of Jesuit missionaries who were present in South america's guarani region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, resulting in the acquisition by the indigenous population of important skills, including reading, writing, and the mastering of different crafts. ...
January 2011
SSRN Electronic Journal
... While our model does not formally capture income inequality and heterogeneous response of individuals to a socioeconomic shock (due to the uniform distribution of the demand for religious belief), we can nevertheless use it to understand the effects of such an occurrence. Evidence suggests that poorer individuals are more religious than wealthier individuals (Becker & Woessmann, 2013;Herzer & Strulik, 2017), and thus their religious participation might be relatively more sensitive to economic shocks. There is also evidence of large increases in religiosity among the educated lower-middle and middle classes following an economic shock, especially when the shock increases income inequality (Chen, 2010) and unmet expectations of social mobility (Binzel & Carvalho, 2017). ...
January 2013
SSRN Electronic Journal
