CERGIC
Center for Economic Research on Governance, Inequality and Conflict.

We study the relationship between culture and environmental conservation through the lens of deforestation. Focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 2001-2021, we show that changes of national leaders affect deforestation in a way that depends on the environmental culture of their ethnic group's. We use data on folklore to measure the importance of forests in group-specific culture. We find that deforestation and land-intensive activities increase in the ethnic homelands of leaders whose ethnic groups have no or little forest-related culture. These patterns are reversed when the leader's group has a salient forest culture. Our results suggest that culture is an important lever for environmental conservation in Africa.

We study the dynamics of income and wealth inequality using a heterogeneous-agent model that combines endogenous portfolio choice, a granular representation of the tax-andtransfer system, and a reduced-form mechanism linking markups to top incomes through entrepreneurial risk. Driven by changes in taxation, markups, and asset prices, the model accounts for the observed trends in income and wealth inequality in France since 1984, up to the top 1% income and wealth shares. We combine counterfactual simulations with a simple accounting decomposition of wealth accumulation to assess the contributions of these driving forces to inequality dynamics and to identify the channels through which they operate. We identify rising markups as the primary driver of income inequality, while all three forces -taxation, markups, and asset prices -contribute significantly to wealth inequality. Our findings highlight both the mechanical impact of differential asset price movements and the central role of endogenous saving responses in shaping wealth inequality over time.

Using exhaustive administrative wealth and income tax data, we study a French wealth tax reform that scaled back information reporting requirements below a certain wealth threshold. We develop a dynamic bunching approach that permits estimating the average response to the reform, the share of compliers, and the LATE. Reported wealth declines sharply in response to the reform and annual wealth growth rates are on average 20% lower among affected taxpayers. This decline appears due to increased evasion facilitated by the lower reporting requirements, as suggested by the fall in self-reported wealth but the lack of response in third-party-reported labor and capital incomes. By contrast, the elasticities to tax rates estimated are very small and insignificant. This illustrates the critical role of information reporting policies in shaping taxpayers' behavior.

As geostrategic competition escalates, the value of controlling territories increases. How does this affect the power balance between state and society within strategic territories? We examine the two Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia during the conflict between Aragon and Genoa (1351-1444), two late medieval great powers. Increased geostrategic competition had opposite effects on the two islands; it empowered society in Corsica while strengthening feudal institutions in Sardinia. To explain divergence, we develop a novel four-player game between two great powers, local elites, and local society. We show how minor differences in the great powers ability to support the local elites interacted with the change in strategic value to lead to a different development on the two islands. We then consider a repeated version of our game to show how imperfect information can explain why the parties engaged in this costly conflict.

Is there an effect of cash crops on the educational component of human capital? Using 228,853 age entries in 19th century Philippine death records, we calculate average ageheaping at the provincial level as a measure of numeracy. The regression results suggest that sugar cultivation had a positive effect on numeracy, but that tobacco had a negative effect. There was no significant effect for abacà. An upward trend in numeracy is observed in most provinces in the second half of the 19th century. An international comparison shows that numeracy levels in the Philippines were lower than in China, including in Fujian province, the region of origin of Chinese immigrants. One possible interpretation of the upward trend in the Philippines is that these Chinese migrants brought with them skills that gradually trickled down to the whole population.

The digital age has fundamentally reshaped international traditional news reporting of foreign conflicts. Online posts by first-hand witnesses influence the volume, slant, content, informativeness, and tone of international media conflict coverage. Exploiting exogenous variation from local internet outages in the conflict zone, we show that U.S. TV networks air more stories about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when ordinary users caught in the conflict have internet access. These stories differ in both slant and focus: in the absence of internet disruptions, news coverage is more sympathetic toward the conflict side experiencing higher casualties, places greater emphasis on civilian suffering, and devotes less attention to foreign policy and electoral considerations. This coverage is also more emotional, includes more local detail, references social media platforms more frequently, and is more homogeneous across ideologically diverse networks. Importantly, these conflict stories generate greater viewer engagement.

This paper examines the evolution of the biological standard of living using anthropometric data from approximately 22,000 Swiss mercenaries born between c. 1725 and c. 1865. Analyzing mercenary data presents two key challenges: left-truncation due to height requirements and potential selection bias across regiments. We address these issues by estimating regiment-specific minimum height thresholds to account for variations in recruitment standards and resource constraints, and by controlling for regiment affiliation to mitigate selection bias. Our findings indicate a decline in average height beginning in the 1770s and continuing into the first half of the 19th century, with no evidence of recovery. While the unique nature of the mercenary sample limits broad generalizations, our results align with the economic hardships of the late 18th century, the challenges of early industrialization, and existing anthropometric evidence from Switzerland and other European countries.

Minimum wages are found to have an inconclusive impact on poverty. Using China's individual-level panel dataset combined with county-level minimum wages, our paper shows that minimum wages have a moderate yet sustained effect on poverty reduction. The results show a two-sided effect: higher minimum wages help pull some workers out of poverty, while simultaneously pushing others in. This dynamic of larger "pulling" effects being counterbalanced by smaller "pushing" effects explains why existing studies often find that minimum wages have a negligible or minimal impact on poverty reduction. Notably, the poverty reduction effect is most pronounced for female workers.

Public speeches by leaders can serve as a cost-effective tool for fostering peace, yet their effectiveness remains uncertain, particularly in divided societies experiencing violent conflict. This paper examines the impact of the Catholic Pope's peace-promoting speeches on conflict dynamics in Africa. To investigate this, we construct a novel dataset covering all papal speeches explicitly addressing violent conflict events in Africa between 1997 and 2022. Using event-study methods, we find that papal speeches reduce overall conflict by 23% on average. However, these effects vary significantly depending on the Pope delivering the speech. While Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis's speeches are associated with substantial reductions in conflict, Pope Benedict XVI's speeches show no significant overall effect but are linked to increased battles and religious violence. We further explore four mechanisms driving these heterogeneous effects. First, the impact of papal speeches is significantly stronger in areas with a Catholic presence, where violence drops by up to 69%. Second, the effectiveness of a speech depends on the bishops' ideological alignment with the Pope's vision, with speeches delivered by a Pope who appointed the current bishop being 17% more effective. Third, political leaders play a crucial role in amplifying the Pope's message, as violence significantly declines in birth regions of national leaders. Finally, the response of armed groups varies depending on their religious affiliation and prior history of violence.

Can social media help promote female access to political positions? Using data from 8,814 parliamentary races across 17 sub-Saharan African countries, we explore this question in a context of significant political underrepresentation of women and rising Facebook penetration over the past decade. We leverage the staggered introduction of Facebook's Free Basics-i.e., free access to Facebook through partner mobile operators-across constituencies and time, documenting the success of this connectivity shock and its subsequent effect on female political representation. We find that the availability of Facebook's Free Basics significantly increases the election of female candidates, but only after one electoral cycle. This effect is driven by female candidates endorsed by established political parties and running for the first time. Uncovering the underlying mechanisms, we document a large, positive relationship between social media use and egalitarian gender norms, particularly regarding women in politics. Examining users' online network structures, we show that this association is driven by exposure to diverse and progressive content, and that such online connections are key to Free Basics' electoral impact. Finally, we find that Free Basics' effect is contingent on the presence of fair elections but is amplified where traditional press freedom is limited.

Children's adult outcomes are influenced by both their parents' socioeconomic status (SES) and the SES of the neighborhood where they grew up. We explicitly distinguish between these factors to identify long-run neighborhood effects. We estimate an ordered probit model of neighborhood choice and use it to infer how population shares of parental SES in each neighborhood vary along both observed and unobserved dimensions. We then regress the average observed outcomes in neighborhoods on these population shares to identify potential outcomes. Using racebased neighborhood sorting as an instrument, we estimate that about half of recent racial inequality in intergenerational mobility is explained by residential segregation.

Black males who witnessed a shooting before turning 12 have 31 percent lower household earnings as adults and are 18 percentage points more likely to engage in violence at age 15. These gaps change little after adjusting for observables, and we present extensive evidence that violent behavior is not driven by selection on unobservables. Since effects are not mediated by incarceration or proxies for gang activity or broader neighborhood effects, we focus on toxic stress as the primary causal mechanism. Providing adolescents with nurturing relationships is almost as beneficial as preventing their exposure to violence and there are complementarities when improving both treatments simultaneously.

Groundwater plays a crucial role in supporting livelihoods and economic activities in Africa, particularly in regions affected by climate-induced water scarcity. This study explores the economic implications of groundwater resources during periods of climate shocks and their relationship to conflict dynamics in affected regions. It employs a comprehensive dataset covering the period from 1997 to 2021, encompassing information on conflict events and groundwater availability. The relationship between groundwater depth, climate shocks, and conflict occurrences is analyzed through both cross-sectional and temporal analyses across 10,310 cells (each 0.5×0.5°, or ≈ 55×55 km). We define two measures of local climate shocks: a temporary shock based on yearly variation, and a persistent shock using a moving average of temperature over multiple years. The findings suggest that areas with a higher proportion of shallow water -i.e., more accessible groundwater-have become increasingly prone to violence over time, particularly in the presence of persistent local climate shocks. Moreover, these persistent shocks have a greater impact on low-intensity and localized conflict events in regions with more accessible groundwater. Further, within-cell inequalities in water access emerge as significant conflict drivers. Lastly, secondary analyses examining the respective contributions of pastoralist activities and state capacity to the observed effects provide insights into the mechanisms. Overall, the findings underscore the need for equitable water management strategies to mitigate conflict and promote sustainable development in Africa.

We examine the political costs of taxation in early modern France. We focus on efforts to enforce the salt tax, the rate of which varied across regions. Using a spatial difference-in-discontinuities design, we compare municipalities just inside the high-tax region with those just outside, before and after a reform aimed at curbing illicit salt smuggling. We find that tax enforcement led to a twenty-fold increase in conflicts between taxpayers and the state in municipalities in the high-tax region. This effect persists until the French Revolution, supporting the view that enforcing the salt tax incurred significant political costs. Finally, we document that the likelihood of conflict increases with tax differences between neighboring regions, which we use to derive an upper bound on the political costs of increased tax enforcement in this historical period.

We document variations in real income for high-skilled, low-skilled, and rural migrant households across Chinese cities. Using comprehensive data on land parcel transactions along with individual data for land development and household expenditure, we construct a city-specific housing cost index and assess how it varies across locations. All three components of housing costs --unit land prices, land share in construction, and housing share in expenditure-- decrease from city centres to the periphery, increase with city population, and decrease with city land area, as predicted by theory. Overall, housing costs in China are high and vary widely between locations. While income gains outweigh housing costs when moving from smaller to larger cities, in the largest cities, housing costs begin to dominate, particularly for low-skilled and rural migrant households. This suggests a bell-shaped relationship between real income and city population in China, aligning with theoretical predictions.

Performance indicators transform political press coverage, yet their effects on MPs' behavior remain unstudied. Using Nosdeputes.fr, the French website computing such indicators, we address this gap. We compile a comprehensive dataset of press articles, identifying all mentions of MPs' indicators, to disentangle the effects of the website from those of indicator coverage. Performances increase following the website's launch, further amplified by coverage. However, MPs explicitly mentioned do not show additional improvements. While transparency prompts some manipulatione.g., increased copy-pasting-there is no evidence of strategic inflation in amendments or speeches. Thus, indicators enhance collective but not individual accountability, with limited adverse effects.

This chapter examines the evolution of working conditions in pre-industrial Normandy, focusing on the longstanding debates over working time and public holidays. During the Middle Ages. theologians like Nicolas de Clamanges criticised the rising number of non-working religious days, arguing that they promoted non-religious behaviour and harmed poor workers. This debate persisted in the following centuries, particularly between Catholic and Protestant intellectuals. More recently, seminal works in economic history have emphasised the significance of working days for our understanding of past living standards, prompting further methodological refinements. Using new data on religious holidays and payment records, we assess the actual versus theoretical working days in Normandy from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Our analysis suggests that the common assumption that 250 working days per year was the norm for many labourers during the late Middle Ages. This figure seems, however, higher for the later period. By the mid-eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for individuals to work as many as 290-300 days per year. We further explore changes in labour regulations to document daily working conditions, showing that working hours increased by one to two hours per day between the Middle Age and the late eighteenth century. While we focus on Normandy, an important commercial and industrial centre in France, we believe this study offers valuable insights into the economic history of early modern Europe.

We develop a novel approach for estimating the economic costs of conflict, using the production network as the primary mechanism through which the disruptive effects of localized conflict spread to peaceful areas. Applying this approach to the Maoist insurgency in Eastern India from 2000 to 2009, we quantify the overall impact of conflict, taking network propagation into account. Our key finding reveals that a one percentage point increase in conflict-induced distortion is associated with an average annual decrease of 0.236% in aggregate output. Notably, 73% of the total output loss can be attributed to network propagation.