Employing novel household survey data, this paper examines how rainfall variability and mean temperature affect individual labor supply in Uzbekistan, a highly traditional lower-middle-income country in Central Asia. The findings suggest that rainfall variability induces the reallocation of...

We show that current differences in trust levels within former Soviet Union countries can be traced back to the system of forced prison labor during Stalin's rule, which was marked by high incarceration rates, repression, and harsh punishments. We argue that those exposed to forced labor camps...

Despite the burgeoning happiness economics literature, scholars have largely ignored explorations of how individuals or countries translate given resources into well-being. Using a balanced panel on 91 countries from Gallup Analytics between 2009-2014 and borrowing insights from production...

Communism was a two-edged sword for the trustees of the former regime. Communist party members and their relatives enjoyed status and privileges, while secret police informants were often coerced to work clandestinely and gather compromising materials about friends, colleagues, and neighbors. We...

After the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, former party members were particularly likely to start businesses and become entrepreneurs. However, it remains unclear whether this entrepreneurial activity was driven by the resources, information and opportunities provided by...

We explore how involuntary and voluntary exits from self-employment affect life and health satisfaction. To that end, we use rich longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1985 to 2017 and a difference-in-differences estimation. Our findings suggest that while transitioning...

The paper looks at the persistence of egalitarian norms in post-Communist societies by focusing on the former members of the Communist parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Russia and their children. Using the individual-level survey data, we show that there are striking differences...

This paper studies the long-term consequences of communism on present-day freedom of expression values in two settings - East Germany and the states linked to the sphere of influence of the former USSR. Exploiting the natural experiment of German separation and later reunification, we show that...

This paper contributes to a better understanding of the drivers of electoral support for Green parties and the environmental actions they promote, which is key to ensuring the long-term feasibility of environmental policies. We examine whether individual environmental preferences translate into...

This paper examines the dynamic impact of natural disasters on the individual acceptance of a physical form of intimate partner violence (IPV). Based on a global sample of individual survey data and historical geo-referenced records of natural disasters at a subnational level, we show that...