Suchergebnisse

This article examines whether the judges of the French Constitutional Court demonstrated partisanship when ruling on the validity of the elections to the lower house of the French Parliament between 1958 and 2005. It uses a new dataset on the decisions of the Constitutional Court which takes into account the characteristics of the controverted parliamentary elections. The rulings of the Constitutional Court are found to be biased against far-right candidates. However, the judges are also found to display some form of independence vis-à-vis the government since they do not favor candidates from the ruling party when they render their decisions.

This study analyzes how state capacity shapes the local impact of national policies by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment in the regional expansion of the state. It uses the local discontinuity created by the boundary of the largest peasant rebellion in 18th century Russia where the state increased security forces and levied taxes more efficiently after the uprising ended. The results show that increased state capacity had limited effects on economic growth until the central government targeted specific development objectives. Namely, when rulers chose to build schools or foster industrialization, their national policies benefited areas which already had strong state capacity.

Abstract
This research explores the effect of early industrialisation on human capital formation. Exploiting exogenous regional variations in the adoption of steam engines across France, the study suggests that, in contrast to conventional wisdom that views early industrialisation as a predominantly deskilling process, the industrial revolution was conducive for human capital formation, generating wide-ranging gains in literacy rates and educational attainment. However, this increase in human capital formation was limited to basic literacy and numeracy and did not entail an increase in the share of pupils in middle and high schools in the population.

In this article we reassess the role of ethnic favoritism in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from 18 African countries, we study how the primary education and infant mortality of ethnic groups were affected by changes in the ethnicity of the countries' leaders during the last 50 years. Our results indicate that the effects of ethnic favoritism are large and widespread, thus providing support for ethnicity-based explanations of Africa's underdevelopment. We also conduct a cross-country analysis of ethnic favoritism in Africa. We find that ethnic favoritism is less prevalent in countries with one dominant religion. In addition, our evidence suggests that stronger fiscal capacity may have enabled African leaders to provide more ethnic favors in education but not in infant mortality. Finally, political factors, linguistic differences, and patterns of ethnic segregation are found to be poor predictors of ethnic favoritism.

In this paper we reassess the role of ethnic favoritism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from 18 African countries, we study how primary education and infant mortality of ethnic groups were affected by changes in the ethnicity of the countries' leaders during the last fifty years. Our results indicate that the effects of ethnic favoritism are large and widespread, thus providing support for ethnicity-based explanations of Africa's underdevelopment. We also conduct a crosscountry analysis of ethnic favoritism in Africa. We find that ethnic favoritism is less prevalent in countries with one dominant religion. In addition, our evidence suggests that stronger fiscal capacity may have enabled African leaders to provide more ethnic favors in education but not in infant mortality. Finally, political factors, linguistic differences and patterns of ethnic segregation are found to be poor predictors of ethnic favoritism.