Tolerance - respecting individual choice and differences among people - is a prominent feature of modern European culture. That immigrants embrace this kind of liberal value is arguably important for integration, a central policy goal. We provide a rigorous study of what factors in the ancestral...

Tolerance is a distinguishing feature of Western culture: There is a widespread attitude that people should be allowed to say what they want even if one dislikes the message. Still, the degree of tolerance varies between and within countries, as well as over time, and if one values this kind of...

Many countries have undertaken central-bank independence reforms, but the years of implementation differ. What explains such differences in timing? This is of interest more broadly, as it sheds light on factors that matter for the speed at which economic reforms come about. We study a rich set...

We showed, in Berggren and Elinder (2012), that tolerance toward homosexuals is negatively and quite robustly related to economic growth. In a comment, Bornhoff and Lee (forthcoming) question this finding on model-specification grounds. By undertaking three changes, they purport to show that our...

We conduct an extensive robustness analysis of the relationship between trust and growth by investigating a later time period and a bigger sample than in previous studies. In addition to robustness tests that focus on model uncertainty, we systematize the investigation of outlier influence on...

While previous research examines how institutions matter for general life satisfaction and how specific institutions embodying equal rights for gay people matter for the life satisfaction of gays, we combine these two issues to analyze how the latter type of institutions relates to general life...

Uncertainty affects people in various ways. It is frequently found to hinder investment and production in the economic sphere. In this study, we examine the empirical relationship between uncertainty and tolerance toward Muslims and Jews. Does uncertainty make people more or less tolerant? This...

We highlight a new factor behind integration: tolerance in the immigrants’ background culture. We hypothesize that it is easier to partake of economic, civic-political and social life in a new country for a person stemming from a culture that embodies tolerance towards people who are...

Tolerance – respecting those who are different – is arguably of particular importance in an era of globalization, where a potential for economic, social and personal development is increasingly a function of interaction with others different from oneself. We investigate whether globalization...

While previous research documents a negative relationship between government size and economic growth, suggesting an economic cost of big government, a given government size generally affects growth differently in different countries. As a possible explanation of this differential effect, we...