Участие в международных конференциях

Научные сотрудники МЦИИР в конце апреля выступили со своими докладами на двух международных конференциях: 78-ой ежегодной конференции MPSA (Midwest Political Science Association) и конференции EPCS (European Public Choice Society).

На 78-ой ежегодной конференции MPSA Денис Иванов представил доклад “Public Reaction on Trade Sanctions in a Democratic Context: Evidence from Moldovan Wine Embargo”.

Аннотация доклада: Economic, and in particular trade sanctions are frequently used as a foreign policy tool. However, not enough is known on how these sanctions affect popular opinion: do people blame their government for the suffering inflicted by sanctions, or they rally ‘round the flag in defiance of foreign attempts to influence actions of their governments? Research of this problem is particularly exacerbated by the fact that sanctions are typically imposed on autocracies, which might bias media coverage of the sanctions, rig elections, and forbid independent polling, thus making empirical identification of the sanctions effect nearly impossible. In this paper, I study a case of Russia imposing trade sanctions on a democratic post-Soviet country. In 2006, Russia banned import of wines from Moldova, which has been widely perceived as an attempt to punish Moldovan government for its increasingly pro-European course. Russia was the single largest consumer of Moldovan wines, amounting to 75 percent of export in 2005, thus making economic impact of sanctions sufficient. Combining data from the 1994-2010 parliamentary elections results by almost nine hundred Moldovan communes and the governmental register of wine regions, I show that, following the embargo, vote share or the Party of Communists, the major pro-Russian political force in Moldova at the moment, decreased by 2 percentage points in wine-producing communes. The effect is driven mostly by communes with the highest share of the ethnic majority, thus providing suggestive evidence in favor the rally ‘round the flag hypothesis. This implies that the wine embargo was not efficient in bolstering pro-Russian political forces in Moldova.

На конференции EPCS (European Public Choice Society) было представлено два доклада.

Ирина Левина (соавторы – Е. Борисова, В. Брызгалин) “Is rule following good or bad for economic growth?”

Аннотация доклада: Do norms of rule following, i.e. individual unconditional compliance with instructions and nurturing obedience in children, support better economic development? On the one hand, rule following should positively affect economic development since it should create predictable environment with transparent and equal conditions and support stronger rule of law. On the other hand, unconditional or excessive rule following can limit individuals’ initiative, creativity and motivation that are important for innovation and economic success in the modern world. We explore empirically the relation between norms of rule following and economic development of countries using data from the World Values Survey. Results of our empirical analysis demonstrate a robust negative relation between the strength of rule following norms on the one hand and country-level economic growth and innovation on the other. In countries where people are more prone to follow unconditionally work instructions, as well as in countries where people are more likely to treat obedience as an important quality that parents should develop in their children, economic growth and innovation are lower, other things being equal. Our results question the importance and usefulness of unconditional rule-following for economic development in the modern world.

Екатерина Борисова (соавторы – В. Заболотский, К. Шоорс) “The Agricultural Origins of Gender Norms”

Аннотация доклада: We investigate the origins of cultural differences in gender norms by using sustainable genetic markers – Y-DNA haplogroups – associated with the spread of agriculture. We find that regions with a greater share of population of agricultural ancestry have lower female labor force participation rates and higher gender inequality. Residents of these regions are also more likely to have gender-discriminatory attitudes towards females. By contrast, regions where the hunting-gathering ancestry prevails have lower gender inequality and residents of these regions are less gender-biased. Results are robust both for the country-level and individual-level analysis, a rich set of control variables as well as to machine learning estimation procedures. Our results add to the discussion of how the issues of women’s agency should be addressed in regions with different agricultural past to achieve higher gender equality.