Research events

Title: The Institutional Sources of Economic Transformation: Energy Policy from the Oil Crises to Climate Change

Abstract

Why are some governments more effective in promoting economic change than others? We develop a theory of the institutional sources of economic transformation. Domestic institutions condition the ability of policymakers to impose costs on consumers and producers. We argue that institutions can enable transformation through two central mechanisms: insulation and compensation. The institutional sources of transformation vary across policy types—whether policies impose costs primarily on consumers (demand-side policies) or on producers (supply-side policies). Proportional electoral rules and strong welfare states facilitate demand-side policies, whereas autonomous bureaucracies and corporatist interest intermediation facilitate supply-side policies. We test our theory by leveraging the 1973 oil crisis, an exogenous shock that compelled policymakers to simultaneously pursue transformational change across OECD countries. Panel analysis, case studies, and discourse network analysis support our hypotheses. The findings offer important lessons for contemporary climate change policy and low-carbon transitions.

Politics and administrative turnover in highly meritocratic systems

Title of the presentation "Land Property Rights, Cadasters and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Panel 1000-2015 CE”

Abstract

Since the transition to agricultural production, property rights to land have been a key institution for economic development. Clearly defined land rights provide economic agents with increased access to credit, secure returns on investment, free up resources used to defend one's land rights, and facilitate land market transactions. Formalized land records also strengthen governments' capacity to tax land-owners. Despite a large body of extant micro-level empirical studies, macro-level research on the evolution of formal rights to land, and their importance for economic growth, has so far been lacking. In this paper, we present a novel data set on the emergence of state-administered cadasters (i.e. centralized land records) for 159 countries over the last millennium. We also analyze empirically the association between the development of cadastral institutions and long-run economic growth in a panel of countries. Our findings demonstrate a substantive positive effect of the introduction of cadasters on modern per capita income levels, supporting theoretical conjectures that states with more formalized property rights to land should experience higher levels of economic growth.

Title of the presentation "Regime Threats and State Solutions”