Cultural Climate
Climate Risk, Cooperation, and the Co-Evolution of Culture and Institutions
Johannes Buggle & Ruben Durante
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between economic risk and the evolution of social cooperation. We hypothesize that trust developed in pre-industrial times as a result of experiences of cooperation aimed at coping with climatic risk. We document that European regions with higher pre-industrial climatic variability display higher levels of trust today. This effect is driven by variability in the growing season months and is more pronounced in agricultural regions. Regarding possible mechanisms, our results indicate that climatic risk favored inter-community exchange and the early adoption of inclusive political institutions which is associated with higher quality of local governments today.
The origins of agricultural inheritance traditions
Thilo Huning & Fabian Wahl
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the origins of agricultural inheritance traditions, equal partition and primogeniture. Our case study is the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Our empirical findings suggest that rural inheritance traditions were primarily determined by geography. First, fertile soils allowed splitting of the land among siblings for longer and with fewer conflicts, and hence we find more equal partition in areas with higher soil quality, especially at elevation levels conducive to intensive agriculture. Second, geography determined the settlement pattern. Areas that were settled before the Middle Ages, when land was abundant and free, are more likely to apply equal partition today. In areas that were largely uninhabited until the Middle Ages, primogeniture is the norm. We argue that these areas were deforested with the obligation of primogeniture, imposed by feudal lords.
The Role of Communities in the Transmission of Political Values: Evidence from Forced Population Transfers
Volha Charnysh & Leonid Peisakhin
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article evaluates the role of community bonds in the long-term transmission of political values. At the end of World War II, Poland's borders shifted westward, and the population from the historical region of Galicia (now partly in Ukraine) was displaced to the territory that Poland acquired from Germany. In a quasi-random process, some migrants settled in their new villages as a majority group, preserving communal ties, while others ended up in the minority. The study leverages this natural experiment of history by surveying the descendants of these Galician migrants. The research design provides an important empirical test of the theorized effect of communities on long-term value transmission, which separates the influence of family and community as two competing and complementary mechanisms. The study finds that respondents in Galicia-majority settlements are now more likely to embrace values associated with Austrian imperial rule and are more similar to respondents whose families avoided displacement.
A State-Level Analysis of Gender Inequality on Male and Female Homicide
Matthew Moore, Mark Heirigs & Allison Barnes
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Inequalities have received a fair amount of study from criminologists interested in homicide and crime. The vast majority of the examinations exploring the relationship between inequality and homicide and crime have examined income inequality. Nonetheless, feminist theorists have stated that gender inequality may be predictive of all violence, not just female victimization. The UNDP gender inequality index was replicated for states in the United States and applied to overall, male, and female homicide rates. The findings demonstrate that increased gender inequality is predictive of increased overall, male, and female homicide. These findings illustrate that gender inequality is predictive of overall, male, and female homicide victimization.
Women hold up half the sky? Trade specialization patterns and work-related gender norms
Jie Li
Journal of International Economics, January 2021
Abstract:
This paper studies whether export composition differences in gender-specific skills can affect individuals' work-related gender norms. We start by identifying female-oriented and male-oriented skills at the occupation level based on literature in neuroscience and medicine. Then with industries' occupational employment share data and exports data, we are able to construct country-level gender-specific skill export intensities. They are combined with gender norm information from World Value Surveys to test the hypothesis. To establish causality, a gravity model based IV strategy is adopted to get export intensities from trade flows predicted with exogenous factors. The empirical results show that if a country exports more in industries using female-oriented skills intensively relative to male-oriented skills, individuals in that country are more likely to have equal gender norms. Mechanism tests indicate that this relationship holds because expansion in female-oriented exporting sectors improves females' probability to work and their economic contribution to the household. In addition, we find suggestive evidence that some females choose to postpone their marriage age and have fewer children to seize increased job opportunities. Besides improved economic status, females also put more emphasis on work following export expansions in female-oriented skill sectors, which also contributes to equal gender norms.
Irrigation and Culture: Gender Roles and Women’s Rights
Per Fredriksson & Satyendra Kumar Gupta
University of Louisville Working Paper, October 2020
Abstract:
This paper proposes that ancestral use of irrigation reduces contemporary female labor force participation and female property rights. We test this hypothesis using an exogenous measure of irrigation and data from the Afrobarometer, cross-country data, the European Social Survey, the American Community Survey, and the India Demographic and Household Survey. Our hypothesis receives considerable empirical support. We find negative associations between ancestral irrigation and actual female labor force participation, and attitudes to such participation, in contemporary African and Indian populations, 2nd generation European immigrants, 1.5 and 2nd generation US immigrants, and in cross-country data. Moreover, ancestral irrigation is negatively associated with attitudes to female property rights in Africa and with measures of such rights across countries. Our estimates are robust to a host of control variables and alternative specifications. We propose multiple potential partial mechanisms. First, in pre-modern societies the men captured technologies complementary to irrigation, raising their relative productivity. Fertility increased. This caused lower female participation in agriculture and subsistence activities, and the women worked closer to home. Next, due to the common pool nature of irrigation water, historically irrigation has involved more frequent warfare. This raised the social status of men and restricted women’s movement. These two mechanisms have produced cultural preferences against female participation in the formal labor market. Finally, irrigation produced both autocracy and a culture of collectivism. These are both associated with weaker female property rights.
A Comparative Analysis of Emotion-Related Cultural Norms in Popular American and Chinese Storybooks
Ruyi Ding, Wei He & Qian Wang
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, February 2021, Pages 209-226
Abstract:
Storybooks written for young children contain rich information on emotions and act as important educational tools for children’s emotion socialization. The current study aims to investigate how cultural norms regarding emotions are portrayed in the narratives of popular storybooks across cultures. Thus, in this study, 38 bestselling Chinese storybooks written by Chinese authors and 42 bestselling American storybooks by European-American writers were compared. The narratives were coded with a focus on emotion-related content and further analysed using binary logistic regressions. The findings revealed that American storybooks were more likely to present positive (vs. negative) emotions, negative powerful (vs. negative powerless) emotions, and supportive (vs. unsupportive and teaching) responses to negative emotions than Chinese storybooks, but less likely to present social (vs. personal) themes, other-based (vs. self-based) attribution, and teaching (vs. supportive and unsupportive) responses to negative emotions. However, the results found no cultural variation in the prevalence of intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) interpersonal emotion regulation. The findings suggest that elements of emotion-related content coexist in both cultures although the relative salience of such content differs across cultures.
Left Out But “In Control”? Culture Variations in Perceived Control When Excluded by a Close Other
Sasha Kimel et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research and theorizing suggest two competing — yet untested — hypotheses for how European Americans’ and Asians’ feeling of being “in control” might differ when excluded by a close other (e.g., a good friend). Drawing on different national contexts (i.e., United States, Japan), cultural groups (i.e., Japanese, Asian/Asian Americans, European Americans), and exclusion paradigms (i.e., relived, in vivo), four separate experiments (N = 2,662) examined feelings of control when excluded by a close- or distant-other. A meta-analysis across these experiments indicated that Asians and Asian Americans felt more in control than European Americans when the excluder was a close other. In contrast, no consistent pattern emerged when the excluder was a distant other. This research has implications for cultural variations in aggressiveness as well as health and well-being following exclusion’s threat to perceived control.
The Spatial Ingroup Bias: Ingroup Teams Are Positioned Where Writing Starts
Maria Laura Bettinsoli et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
In four studies, we test the hypothesis that people, asked to envisage interactions between an ingroup and an outgroup, tend to spatially represent the ingroup where writing starts (e.g., left in Italian) and as acting along script direction. Using soccer as a highly competitive intergroup setting, in Study 1 (N = 100) Italian soccer fans were found to envisage their team on the left side of a horizontal soccer field, hence playing rightward. Studies 2a and 2b (N = 219 Italian and N = 200 English speakers) replicate this finding, regardless of whether the own team was stronger or weaker than the rival team. Study 3 (N = 67 Italian and N = 67 Arabic speakers) illustrates the cultural underpinnings of the Spatial Intergroup Bias, showing a rightward ingroup bias for Italian speakers and a leftward ingroup bias for Arabic speakers. Findings are discussed in relation to how space is deployed to symbolically express ingroup favoritism (Spatial Ingroup Bias) versus shared stereotypes (Spatial Agency Bias).