Religious leaders sometimes condemn progressive social norms. In this paper,I revisit David Hume’s hypothesis that secular states can “bribe” churches intoadopting less strict religious doctrines. The hypothesis is difficult to test due toreverse causality: more liberal theologies may attract more political support inthe first place. To circumvent this problem, I focus on a theological conflict oversame-sex marriage within the Church of Sweden and take advantage of politicalregulations that effectively make some parishes shareholders of the church’sstate-protected property. The shares used for statistical identification are tied toproperty rights assigned more than 300 years ago, and they cannot be sold, tradedor amended by the individual parishes. I find that priests in shareholding parishesare less likely to publicly oppose same-sex marriage. The effect is stronger inparishes with more conservative members. The combined results are consistentwith a model of clerical opportunism, in which access to political rents increasesthe clergy’s loyalty to the political sponsors relative to the local community.
Religious leaders sometimes condemn progressive social norms. This article revisits David Hume's hypothesis that secular states can "bribe" churches into adopting less strict religious doctrines. The hypothesis is difficult to test due to reverse causality: more liberal theologies may attract more political support in the first place. The empirical strategy used to circumvent this problem focuses on a theological conflict over same-sex marriage within the Church of Sweden and takes advantage of political regulations that effectively make some parishes shareholders of the church's state-protected property. The shares used for statistical identification are tied to property rights assigned more than 300 years ago, and they cannot be sold, traded, or amended by the individual parishes. The results show that priests in shareholding parishes are less likely to publicly oppose same-sex marriage. The impact of political protection is stronger in parishes with more conservative members. The results are consistent with a model of clerical opportunism, in which income protection makes priests less likely to pander to the stricter followers.
Informal sectors in developing countries are often thought of as responses to rigid and cumbersome market regulations. In this paper I study informal trade as a first-best outcome. In the model I propose rigid regulations can be necessary to achieve efficiency even though they are always sidestepped. The key assumption is that the regulations define the trading parties' fall-back position in case the informal bargaining process breaks down. I set up a field experiment to test the model's mechanisms in the Cape Town market for metered taxis. Consistent with the model, I find that sidestepping the regulations increase cost efficiency (taxis take the shortest route). The price is however unaffected, suggesting informal bargaining leads to a Pareto improvement.
We use time-series of rainfall to estimate the response of body weight to transitory changes in household income in rural Tanzania. We find that the response of body weight to income changes is positive on average, but that the impact is highest for female children, and lower for adults. For female children, a ten-percent increase in household income implies an increase in body weight by about 0.4 kg. In contrast, the body weight of adolescents and young adults is virtually invariant to income changes
In this paper, we use the rapid introduction of an unconditional cash grant (child support) in South Africa to estimate the marginal propensity to consume and earn out of unearned income. We find that the marginal propensity to earn is about -0.3 and that the marginal propensity to consume is about 0.7. Nothing of the grant appears to be saved; if anything, households dissave against future grant payments. The marginal propensities estimated here are similar to those reported in comparable papers using US data. However, they stand in contrast to some results on conditional cash transfers in other developing countries.
We use a rapid introduction of an unconditional cash grant (child support) in South Africa to estimate the marginal propensity to consume and earn out of a permanent change in unearned income. We find that the marginal propensity to earn is about to –0.25 for single-adult households, and somewhat lower for households with more than one adult. A very small fraction of the grant is saved. All in all, the marginal propensities estimated here are all similar to those reported in comparable papers using US data. However, they stand in contrast to some results on conditional cash transfers in other developing countries.
Results in behavioral economics suggest that material incentives can crowd out motivation, if agents are mission-oriented rather than self-interested. We test this prediction on a sample of nonprot organizations in Sweden. Swedish nonprot organizations receive tax funds annually to promote human development issues through information campaigns. Traditionally, the contract with the main principal (the Swedish foreign aid agency) has been based on trust and self-regulation. We designed an experimental policy intervention, eectively replacing the trust-based contract with an increased level of monitoring from the principal, along with a threat to cut future funds if irregularities were detected. Our findings are inconsistent with (strong) motivational crowd-out. Overall, using both self-reported and observed measures of outreach, we find that the intervention improved eciency. Graphical analysis shows that non-monitored organizations exhibit a distinct tendency to maximize expenditure; in contrast, organizations in the treatment group are more likely to return unused grants to Sida. Additionally, we find no crowding out of private contributions and no evidence of a "discouraged NGO"-syndrome.
Results in behavioural economics suggest that material incentives can crowd out motivation if agents are mission-oriented rather than self-interested. We test this prediction on a sample of non-profit organisations in Sweden. Traditionally, contracts with the main principal (the Swedish foreign aid agency) have been based on trust and self-regulation. We designed a randomised policy experiment, effectively replacing the trust-based contract with an increased level of monitoring from the principal. Overall, using both self-reported and observed measures of outreach, we find that the intervention increased outreach, reduced expenditures and reduced the number of financial irregularities.
This paper analyzes the evolution of tax progressivity in Sweden from both annual and lifetime perspectives. Using a rich micro panel with administrative records of incomes, taxes and benefits over the period 1968–2009, we calculate tax rates across the income distribution accounting for different tax bases as well as the role of transfers. The uniquely long time span also allows us to compute tax progressivity as realized over a cohort’s entire life cycle. Our main finding is that taxes are considerably less progressive over the lifetime than in any single year. In fact, life cycle taxes are close to proportional, bearing a redistributive effect of only a few percent. Intragenerational income mobility seems to be driving this result, although the Swedish economic crisis of the 1990s and the tax reforms of 1971 and 1991 are also important. Labor income taxes contribute less to progressivity in recent years, whereas transfers to unemployed and old-age pensioners have become increasingly important. These findings are robust to the use of different tax rates, tax bases, sample populations, rates of discounting and controls for reranking.
In this paper, we analyze the evolution of tax-and-transfer progressivity in Sweden over both annual and lifetime horizons. Using a rich micro panel covering the period 1968-2009, we calculate tax rates over a cohort's entire working life cycle. Our main finding is that taxes are considerably less progressive over the lifetime than in any single year. Social insurance transfers to transitory low-income earners account for most of this result. We offer a number of robustness checks of the measurement of lifetime incomes and progressivity, but none of them changes our overall findings.
Recent research has reported positive effects on schooling due to in utero pro-tection from iodine deciency resulting from iodized oil capsule distribution inTanzania. We revisit the Tanzanian experience by investigating how these eectsdier over time and across surveys; across dierent treatment specications; andacross additional educational outcome measures. Contrary to previous studies, wend that the estimated effects tend to be small and not robust across specicationsor samples. Using all available data and a medically motivated iodine depletionfunction, we find no evidence of a positive long-run ffeect of iodine deficiency pro-tection on educational attainment.
Scholars have theorized that congenital health endowment is an important determinant of economic outcomes later in a person's life. Field, Robles, and Torero (2009, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1, 140-169) find large increases in educational attainment caused by a reduction of fetal iodine deficiency following a set of iodine supplementation programs in Tanzania. We revisit the Tanzanian iodine programs with a narrow and wide replication of the study by Field et al. We are able to exactly replicate the original results. We find, however, that the findings are sensitive to alternative specification choices and sample restrictions. We try to address some of these concerns in the wide replication; we increase the sample size fourfold, and we improve the precision of the treatment variable by incorporating new institutional and medical insights. Despite the improvements, no effect is found. We conclude that the available data do not provide sufficient power to detect a possible effect, as treatment assignment cannot be measured with sufficient precision.
It has been suggested that carbon labelling of food, on voluntary or non-voluntary basis, could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the influence of such labels on consumer purchases. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether voluntary carbon labelling affects the demand for milk. A randomized field experiment was conducted in 17 retail stores in Sweden, where a sign provided consumers with qualitative information about the carbon impact of climate-certified milk. The results suggest that the sign increased the demand for the climate-certified milk by approximately 6-8%, and the result is robust to alternative model specifications. The effect is entirely driven by large stores, such as supermarkets. We find no statistically significant impact on total milk sales, and the dataset is too small to verify the consequences for other milk brands. The effect on the demand for the labelled milk is short-lived.