This paper provides a novel contribution on the relation between school performance and cheating behavior by analyzing a sample of 157 pupils in 10 primary schools located in the outskirts of Goma (Congo, DR). In two subsequent school years, children were administered a questionnaire that included a modified Dice Rolling Task (DRT) and a Dictator Game (DG), while information on their school performance was obtained through the collection of school reports. We analyze whether cheating (measured through DRT) could be explained by school performance (measured by Math and Total scores) when controlling for individual (such as age, sex, altruism and previously recorded cheating attitudes) and background (such as class, school, interviewer) characteristics. Our results show that cheating is positively and significantly correlated with better school performance. Our main contribution shows that children better at math, in contrast to generally high-performing students, are more likely to lie when rewards from lying (i.e. the difference between two dice in a given roll) are higher.
The relationship between democracy and economic growth has been widely debated in the social sciences with contrasting results. We apply a meta-analytical framework surveying 188 studies (2047 models) covering 36 years of research in the field. We also compare the effect of democracy on growth with the effect of human capital on growth in a sub-sample of 111 studies (875 models). Our findings suggest that democracy has a positive and direct effect on economic growth beyond the reach of publication bias, albeit weaker (about one third) of that of human capital. Further, the growth effect of democracy appears to be stronger in more recent papers not surveyed in Doucouliagos and Ulubaşoğlu (2008). Finally, we show that the heterogeneity in the reported results is mainly driven by spatial and temporal differences in the samples, indicating that the democracy and growth nexus is not homogeneous across world regions and decades.
Food security and inclusive institutions are increasingly acknowledged as fundamental dimensions of development, given their role in promoting long-run economic growth and stability. We explore the nexus between achievements in democratisation and food security in low- and middle-income countries, through an analysis of a panel of 106 countries observed from 1990 to 2012. We find that democratisation processes are associated with improved food security, and that the former systematically precedes the latter, shaping a temporal dependence path. We argue that the inclusiveness of democratic institutions is important in explaining this relationship.
The paper presents the results of a Longitudinal Lab-in-the-Field Experiment implemented between September 2015 and July 2016 performed in two State Prisons in California (USA) to measure change in prosocial preferences. A subset of eligible inmates willing to undertake GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power) program, were randomly assigned to it. The paper tests whether the participation to this program (used as a treatment in the experiments) affects prosocial preferences of participants, with specific reference to trust. The results of a Difference-in-Differences (DID) estimation procedure show that trust significantly increased in GRIP participants compared to the control group. This result is robust to alternative estimation techniques and to the inclusion of an endogenous behavioral measure of altruism.
This paper explores the role of state capacity in affecting the probability of being attacked by another country. We measure state capacity as the effectiveness of state sovereignty over its territory (from the Variety of Democracy dataset) and focus on high intensity episodes of Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). The analysis is performed through a logit model, investigating 42 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1954–2010. The paper shows that higher levels of state capacity increase the probability of suffering from external attacks. This result may appear counterintuitive, since countries having full control of their own territory are expected to be stronger, therefore suggesting that a would-be invader may be defeated. However, our result is consistent with balance-of-power theories in international relations, where countries that perceive a threat set up a process of balancing that could ultimately tend towards an armed conflict.
This paper investigates the relationship between players’ wages and sport performance in the Italian top professional football league—Serie A. The analysis focuses on 14 seasons from 2001/2002 to 2014/2015. Findings show that aggregate wage expenditure is a robust predictor of success for Italian professional football teams. We first exploited a fixed-effects panel data and eventually we addressed the problem of endogeneity by providing a dynamic IV specification of the model. Based on the System-GMM framework, we employed a model including lagged terms of dependent variables and covariates as instruments to control for endogeneity as well as alternative exogenous instruments to control for geographical/environmental factors and socio-economic factors that could be the actual predictors of performance through an indirect effect on payroll.
This paper explores the intertwined relationship between democracy and state capacity, i.e. the effectiveness of state sovereignty over its territory and population, in affecting the probability of civil wars’ onset. This work aims at providing a fresh new look on this relationship by exploiting the recent release of a new dataset of institutional indicators (provided within the V-Dem project), that allows to analyse the effect of democracy and state capacity on conflicts’ onset. The analysis is performed through a logit model, investigating 142 countries over the period 1950–2014. The paper shows that once state capacity is fully taken into account, the inverted-U shaped relationship between democracy and civil wars is no longer robust to alternative measures of democracy, and that state capacity is the crucial factor in providing a decrease in the probability of the onset of a civil conflict. Furthermore, by implementing an interactive model, the paper shows that state capacity counterbalances the effect of democracy when incompatibility is over government, by generating an overall decreasing effect on the probability of civil war.
This paper highlights Richard Stone’s contribution to input-output analysis, the relevance, originality and effectiveness of which are closely tied to the international and national positions he held during his professional life, especially in relation to the development of an international standard system of national accounts and the development of a comprehensive and realistic econometric model of growth. This paper provides an overview of the major theoretical and empirical contributions of Stone to input-output analysis, as well as some less well-known papers. Among the former, we may mention Stone’s studies on the integration of input-output tables into the Social National Accounts (SNA), his research on the Social Accounting Matrices (SAM), the adjustment and updating of the technical coefficients (RAS method). Among the latter may be mentioned the attempt to apply the methods of input-output at the micro level. Finally, the paper shows Stone’s interest, in his later years, in the application of input-output analysis to demography, health, education, and environment.
