Recent research shows that natural resources can hurt institutions by promoting corruption and diverting resources from the production of public goods. This, in turn, may have implications for the trust individuals hold for their governments. We explore this possibility by linking survey data on...

This paper adds to knowledge on the role of politicians' and voters' identities in influencing policy-making in societies marked by ethnic inequality. The outcome we investigate is the initiatives and policies targeting Indigenous populations in the context of Australia. We ask whether and how...

Individuals are at their most mental plasticity in their impressionable years (ages 18-25 years) forming long-term attitudes and behaviours essential to functioning in a society, such as trust. In this paper we ask how exposure to natural disasters within the impressionable years may affect the...

In many transition countries, the collapse of communism ushered in language reforms to adapt to the newfound independence from the Soviet Union and openness to the rest of the world. Such reforms may have implications for individuals' economic opportunities, since foreign language proficiency...

Recent evidence shows that highly skewed sex ratios at birth are observed not only in China and India, but also for a number of countries in the Southeast Europe and South Caucasus - a region that has seen eruptions of conflicts following the collapse of communist regimes. Yet, the role of...

This paper investigates whether female political representation in national parliaments influences climate change policy outcomes. Based on data from a large sample of countries, we demonstrate that female representation leads countries to adopt more stringent climate change policies. We exploit...

Corruption is pervasive, but we know little about its effects on individual lives. This paper examines whether living in a corrupt society has deleterious effects on health. Using individual-level data from 28 post-communist countries, we demonstrate that bribing for public services worsens...

This paper identifies a new source of differences in religiosity: the presence of future tense marking in language. We argue that the rewards and punishments that incentivise religious behaviour are less effective for speakers of languages that contain future tense marking. Consistent with this...

We assess the relative importance of statistical residual-based measures of discrimination in determining indigenous Australians' perceptions of discrimination in the labour market. We find that statistical measures are largely unrelated to discrimination reports among males and negatively...