Political institutions and academic freedom: evidence from across the world

Public Choice - There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960–2017, we...     

Economic freedom and equality: Friends or foes?

How does economic freedom, mainly how property rights are designed and protected, relate to income equality? Whilst this is argued to be theoretically ambiguous, the empirical results reveal that there is a positive relationship between changes in economic freedom and equality: the more a country increased its economic freedom between 1975 and 1985, the higher the level of equality around 1985. Most important in this regard is trade liberalization and financial deregulation. Also, there are signs that the level of economic freedom in 1985 is negatively related to the level of equality around that year, plausibly because of less redistribution.

     

Feststellung der energiepolitischen Notwendigkeit des Tagebaus Garzweiler II nach 48 KVBG – Eine verbindliche Vorgabe für die Fachplanung

Natur und Recht - Nach der Zustimmung des Bundestages zum öffentlich-rechtlichen Vertrag zur Beendigung der Braunkohleverstromung und dessen Unterzeichnung am 10.2.2021 steht der Ausstieg aus...     

Tolerance and growth: modeling the empirical relationship

We showed, in Berggren and Elinder (2012), that tolerance toward homosexuals is negatively and quite robustly related to economic growth. In a comment, Bornhoff and Lee (this issue) question this finding on model-specification grounds. By undertaking three changes, they purport to show that our main result does not hold. In this article, we demonstrate that one of these changes is inconsequential (replacing GDP per capita by its logarithm in controlling for conditional convergence) and argue that two of them are questionable. First, the removal of certain central control variable risks introducing omitted variable bias and inconsistent estimates. Second, regional dummy variables are added on arbitrary grounds. For example, by using regional dummy variables that are just as reasonable as the Baltic dummy used by Bornhoff and Lee, we find that significance for tolerance toward homosexuals reappears in our empirical model. In all, this implies that there are good grounds for considering the negative relationship between tolerance towards homosexuals and growth valid, Bornhoff and Lee??s claims notwithstanding.     

Is tolerance good or bad for growth?

We investigate how tolerance, as measured by attitudes toward different types of neighbors, affects economic growth in a sample of 54 countries. Unlike previous studies, by Richard Florida and others, we find that tolerance toward homosexuals is negatively related to growth. For tolerance toward people of a different race, we do not find robust results, but the sign of the estimated coefficients is positive, suggesting that inclusion of people irrespective of race makes good use of productive capacity. We propose mechanisms to explain these divergent findings, which clarify why different kinds of tolerance may be of different economic importance.     

Regulation and government debt

Public Choice - Government debt is large in most developed countries, and while budget deficits may reflect short-term attempts to kick-start the economy in times of crisis by means of fiscal...     

Does free trade really reduce growth? Further testing using the economic freedom index

While studies of the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth have shown it to be positive, significant and robust, it has rightly been argued that different areas of economic freedom may have quite different effects on growth. Along that line, Carlsson and Lundström (2002) present the surprising result that “International exchange: Freedom to trade with foreigners” is detrimental for growth. We find that “Taxes on international trade” seems to drive this result. However, using newer data and a more extensive sensitivity analysis, we find that it is not robust. Least Trimmed Squares-based estimation in fact renders the coefficient positive.     

Deliberative multi-actor dialogues as opportunities for transformative social learning and conflict resolution in international environmental negotiations

The format for formal international negotiations on environment and development sometimes prevents negotiators from truly listening to each other and adapt pre-existing positions to realize constructive conflict resolution. In this paper we present and analyse “Multi-Actor Dialogue Seminars” (MADS) as an approach to contribute to transformative social learning and conflict resolution, and the contribution to tangible and intangible outcomes in formal negotiations. Unlike negotiations, the objective of MADS is not to agree on a text, but to identify areas of agreement and disagreement, build trust and understanding and identify policy options that are tailored to different cultural-political and value systems. As a case study we use the breakdown of the negotiations at the formal Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference in 2010 regarding “innovative financial mechanisms,” and subsequent two international Quito Dialogues using the MADS approach. Through a composite of methods this article reveals the effects of the Quito Dialogues on formal CBD negotiations. The Quito Dialogues contributed to bringing actors out of their deadlock and thereby paving the way for constructive results in the formal CBD negotiations, evident by references in CBD Decisions adopted by 196 CBD Parties. We discuss key design and implementation factors which were decisive for these effects including the importance of a bridging organization, trust building, exploration of both convergences and divergences, involvement of participants with diverse and conflicting views early in the planning, promotion of active listening and addressing diverse knowledge systems and power asymmetries.