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This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It ad-vances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that geographical variations in the natural re-turn to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on the distribution of time preference across societies. In particular, exploiting a natural ex...
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... coffee, cotton, cowpea, dry pea, flax, foxtail millet, greengram, groundnuts, indigo rice, maize, oat, oilpalm, olive, onion, palm heart, pearl millet, phaseolus bean, pigeon pea, rye, sorghum, soybean, sunflower, sweet potato, tea, tomato, wetland rice, wheat, spring wheat, winter wheat, white potato, yams, giant yams, subtropical sorghum, tropical highland sorghum, tropical lowland, sorghum, white yams. 18 The choice of rain-fed conditions is further justified by the fact that, although some societies had access to irrigation prior to the industrial revolution, GAEZ's data only provides estimates based on irrigation infrastructure available during the late twentieth century. 19 In case of hibernating crops, the growth cycle captures the days elapsed from onset of post-dormancy period to full maturity. 20 This paper uses revision 25 accessed on October 29, 2013. Data can be accessed at http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=23635. Using these grids, the research constructs estimates for the average regional crop yield and the average regional crop growth cycle (over grid cells in a region), that reflect the average regional levels of these two variables among crops that maximize the caloric yield in each cell. Since a sedentary community is unlikely to exist in a region in which the caloric yield is zero, the analysis focuses on regional level averages across cells where the maximum potential crop yield is positive. 21 Figure 3 depicts the distribution of potential crop yield and growth cycle across global 5 × 5 grids for crops available pre-1500CE. 22 Each cell in Figure 3
Figure 4 shows the correlation between the post-1500CE potential crop yield and growth cycles across countries. There is a strong positive correlation between these country level averages with a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.78 (p < 0.01). This figure epitomizes that "Trees that are slow to grow, bear the best fruit" Molì ere). 21 The results of the empirical analysis are robust to the inclusion of cells with no potential yield as shown in table B.14 in the appendix. 22 Table A.2 in the appendix shows the global distribution of crops pre-1500CE. Importantly, potential crop yield is positively correlated with actual crop yield at the cell level ( Figure 5) and thus potential crop yield serves as a proxy for actual crop yield without subjecting the analysis to the concern of reverse causality. 23,24 Figure 6 shows for each cell in the world the highest yield producing crop in the pre-and the post-1500CE era. It is apparent that: (i) few crops dominated each continent in pre-1500CE era, (ii) in the post-1500 era the number of crops expands dramatically, and (iii) the expansion in available crops changes the highest yield producing crop in most regions of the world. 25 ...
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The chapter presents available evidence about food, agriculture (food production) and nutrition in India today, and attempts to explain the persistence of what we do; our prevalent ways of articulating the problem and addressing the solution spaces.
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... The Caloric Sustainability Index is another instrument for the robustness analysis. It is an indicator of the agricultural potential gauged which is defined the caloric yield that has been available for cultivation in the period after 1500 (Galor and Özak, 2016). The theoretical reasoning behind using this instrument is that low suitability for agriculture is associated with higher degrees of cooperation and the collective actions that are required for planning and harvesting (Ashkanasy et al., 2004;Gaganis et al., 2019, Meggers, 1954. ...
... Latitude is measured as the absolute latitudinal distance from the community to the equator, which is available in the LITS. The Caloric Suitability Index is available from Galor and Özak (2016). ...
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of contextual (community) level social trust on women’s empowerment. The specific knowledge gap explored in this study is that the previous studies theorized that community trust has a positive impact on women’s empowerment. Thus, an increase in trust in the community will empower women. However, such an assumption has been never empirically tested and confirmed. Against this backdrop, the present paper develops a theoretical argument on why the increase in community trust should lead to a higher level of women empowerment. Then, a cross-country survey was used as a data source to test the effect of community trust on women’s empowerment. A traditional single-stage OLS and instrumental variable regressions are estimated to test the effect of community trust on women’s empowerment and quantify the magnitude of such impact. The key finding of this paper is that community trust indeed significantly strengthens the empowerment of women by increasing women’s ownership of assets and improving the decision-making authority of women in the family. Importantly, our findings are robust for the separate rural and urban samples, as well as the samples of younger and older women. Equally, our findings are robust for an alternative set of instruments. The main implication of these findings is that policymakers, social administrators, and government authorities who are working on promoting gender equality should give priority to promoting community-based interventions that nurture and maintain women’s trust.
... Third, the concern about endogeneity is further addressed by treating Crop Yield as instrumental variable through 2SLS estimation (Galor and Özak, 2016;Galor et al., 2017), which is rare consideration reflected in cultural studies, especially cultural-insurance studies (Chui and Kwok, 2008;Park and Lemaire, 2012). While the likelihood of reverse causality of language characteristics and life insurance consumption is extremely low, because language characteristics is stable over time, the estimation bias due to omitted variables can still result in erroneous results. ...
... In this regard, we further employ instrument variable approach to address J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof endogenous problems. Galor and Özak (2016) document that the positive effect of pre-1500 CE crop yield on the long-term orientation. Also, Galor et al. (2017) assert that the existing cross-language differences in future tense structure can be attributed to variations in pre-industrial geographic features that promoted greater agricultural returns. ...
Linguistic research shows that there are differences in how language distinguishes future events from the present. When a language speaker separates the grammatical structure of a language from the future and present, they also separate the future and present in behavior when facing intertemporal choices. In this study, we investigate language induced time perception as a determinant of crosscountry life insurance consumption. The evidence demonstrates that life insurance consumption is higher in countries where there is non-obligatory grammatical future tense in language. This result still confirms the language-insuring hypothesis after considering cultural dimensions, alternative language variables, alternative insurance variable and endogeneity problem. To sum up, the results suggest that language featured by future time reference affects speaker's time perception and life insurance decision. Our evidence also provides implication for life insurer in multinational businesses.
... Istotą ekonomii finansowej będzie więc również konieczność wyboru techniki dyskontowania czasu (Frederick i in., 2002). Premia odpowiada cenie ryzyka, in statu nascendi, genetycznie związanej z cywilizacyjnym przewrotem rewolucji agrarnej, prowadzącej do konieczności oceny decy-zji związanej z rezygnacją z bieżącej konsumpcji płodów rolnych na rzecz ich "zainwestowania", zasiania w oczekiwaniu na plony w kolejnym roku (Galor i Özak, 2016). Ekonomia finansowa z czasem stanie się zbiorem coraz bardziej wysublimowanych formuł matematycznych, swoistego rodzaju kalkulatorem dla cywilizowanego racjonalnego społeczeństwa (Robson i Szentes, 2014). ...
Badanie zjawisk i procesów pieniężnych zachodzących w gospodarce stanowi przedmiot zainteresowania szerokiego grona przedstawicieli środowiska akademickiego. Osoby analizujące wskazane zjawiska i procesy, podejmując wysiłek w tym zakresie, uznają go za działalność naukową – prowadzenie badań naukowych. Czy w związku z tym ekonomia finansowa posługuje się oryginalnym zbiorem założeń ontologicznych i epistemologicznych? Czy i jeżeli tak, to co zasługuje na uznanie za paradygmaty ekonomii finansowej? Próby odpowiedzi na te pytania są przedmiotem artykułu poświęconego ocenie ekonomii finansowej z perspektywy filozofii nauki. Odpowiedzi na te pytania pozwolą nie tylko wyodrębnić istotę tego, czym jest ekonomia finansowa, określając w ten sposób jej ontologiczne granice, lecz również z perspektywy epistemologicznej ustalić, czy występuje charakterystyczna dla ekonomii finansowej metoda poznania ich istoty. Artykuł zawiera krytyczną weryfikację ekonomii finansowej z perspektywy filozofii nauki, w szczególności podjęto w Kuhnowskiej konwencji próbę identyfikacji paradygmatów ekonomii finansowej oraz ich krytycznej analizy. Artykuł pozwolił ustalić, że ekonomia finansowa jest nauką normalną, w rozumieniu zaproponowanym przez Thomasa Kuhna, czyli badań wyrastających z jednego lub wielu osiągnięć naukowych przeszłości, które dana społeczność uczonych aktualnie akceptuje i traktuje jako fundament swej dalszej praktyki. W pracy wskazano fundamentalne dzieła, które stanowią twardy rdzeń programu naukowego ekonomii finansowej w rozumieniu założeń naukowych programów badawczych Imre Lakatosa.
... Therefore, there is hump-shaped relationship between genetic diversity, which is directly related to geography, and comparative development. Another influential paper on geographic factors and economic development is by Galor and Ozak (2016), who argue that time preferences and long-term orientation are affected by geography. They use the expansion of suitable crops for cultivation during the Columbian Exchange to establish that pre-industrial agro-climatic characteristics implying higher return to agricultural investment and have triggered selection, adaptation, and learning processes which have generated a persistent positive effect on the prevalence of long-term orientation in the modern period. ...
Our work sheds light on the joint role of human capital and geography during the early stages of the transition from stagnation to growth in early twentieth century Greece. We uncover a robust association between geography and literacy. We also show that geography is correlated with land inequality and thus establish that land distribution is a channel through which geography influences literacy. Finally, the impact of geography on human capital formation weakens with industrialization. Our work contributes to the literature on geography and human capital in the transition from stagnation to growth since Greece was at the early stages of the industrial era during the study period.
... One includes "thrift, saving money and things." This can be used as a proxy for respondents' time preferences (Galor & Özak, 2016, Wuepper, 2020. ...
We present the first systematic review of the literature on farmer time preference measurements across Europe and North America. We synthesize methodological developments, summarize the empirical findings, and discuss challenges and potential areas for further research. The average reported discount rate of the farmers in Europe and North America is 23% per annum. Farmer time preferences are, however, highly heterogeneous within and across studies. Moreover, we identify methodological challenges and knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research. We draw conclusions for policymakers and researchers.
... Third, the concern about endogeneity is further addressed by treating Crop Yield as instrumental variable through 2SLS estimation (Galor and Özak, 2016;Galor et al., 2017), which is rare consideration reflected in cultural studies, especially cultural-insurance studies (Chui and Kwok, 2008;Park and Lemaire, 2012). While the likelihood of reverse causality of language characteristics and life insurance consumption is extremely low, because language characteristics is stable over time, the estimation bias due to omitted variables can still result in erroneous results. ...
... In this regard, we further employ instrument variable approach to address endogenous problems. Galor and Özak (2016) document that the positive effect of pre-1500 CE crop yield on the long-term orientation. Also, Galor et al. (2017) assert that the existing cross-language differences in future tense structure can be attributed to variations in pre-industrial geographic features that promoted greater agricultural returns. ...
... The pre-1500 CE crop yield Galor and Özak (2016) ...
Linguistic research shows that there are differences in how language distinguishes future events from the present. When a language speaker separates the grammatical structure of a language from the future and present, they also separate the future and present in behavior when facing intertemporal choices. In this study, we investigate language induced time perception as a determinant of cross-country life insurance consumption. The evidence demonstrates that life insurance consumption is higher in countries where there is non-obligatory grammatical future tense in language. This result still confirms the language-insuring hypothesis after considering cultural dimensions, alternative language variables, and endogeneity problem. To sum up, the results suggest that language featured by future time reference affects speaker's time perception and life insurance decision. Our evidence also provides implication for life insurer in multinational businesses.
... From trust to time, economic preferences differ between countries. A rich literature seeks to explain such differences, examining various elements of biology, geography and culture (Falk et al., 2018;Gächter & Schulz, 2016;Galor & Özak, 2016;Henrich et al., 2010;Rieger, Wang, & Hens, 2014). These are natural comparisons between people who differ in their location, language and nationality. ...
... Prior research has outlined some structural factors that may contribute to persistent, crossgenerational poverty traps (Genicot & Ray, 2017;Galor & Özak, 2016). Low self-efficacy may be present in those who live in persistent poverty. ...
This research aims to identify the relationship between poverty and risk preference in Indonesia empirically. This research employs the Indonesia Family Life Survey 2014 (IFLS5) using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and quantile regression approach, one of the most extended longitudinal data, to support this research design. The result reveals that poor households are more risk-averse than others across income levels. Moreover, poor people are poorly educated and mostly come from rural and disaster-prone areas. This evidence suggests that poor people from rural communities and disaster-prone regions should be prioritized and empowered to move from poverty zones due to their relatively high vulnerability.
... We put forward intrasexual competition as a theoretical framework to understand the contemporaneous relationships between skewed sex ratios and violent crime (Hesketh & Xing, 2006;Edlund et al., 2013;Cameron et al., 2019), molestation and rape (Ullman & Fidell, 1989), as well as suicide and early mortality (Chowdhry,5 Fear of a 'convict stain' emerged during the anti-transportationist movement in the mid-1850s (Holdridge, 2015). 6 Our findings that circumstances prevailing at the time of convict settlement of Australia have persistent effects in the long-run align with a literature that highlights how cultural norms originate in critical junctures in history (Nunn & Wantchekon, 2011;Grosfeld et al., 2013;Galor & Özak, 2016) and on how founder populations leave persistent identities (Grosjean, 2014;Bazzi et al., 2020;Haddad, 2022). 7 Our emphasis on within-sex competition also follows an extensive literature in biology (Bachtrog et al., 2014) and evolutionary psychology (Buss, 2016) on the sex ratio (the number of males relative to females) as the primary driver of male-male competition and of behavioral differences between the sexes, including male aggressiveness, excessive risk taking, and dominant behavior over lower-ranked males and females. ...
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We document the historical roots and contemporary consequences of masculinity norms-beliefs about the proper conduct of men. We exploit a natural experiment in which convict transportation in the 18th and 19th centuries created a variegated spatial pattern of sex ratios across Australia. We show that in areas with heavily male-biased convict populations, relatively more men volunteered for World War I about a century later. Even at present these areas remain characterized by more violence, higher rates of male suicide and other forms of preventable male mortality, and more male-stereotypical occupational segregation. Moreover, in these historically male-biased areas, more Australians recently voted against same-sex marriage and boys-but not girls-are more likely to be bullied in school. We interpret these results as manifestations of masculinity norms that emerged due to intense local male-male competition. Once established, masculinity norms persisted over time through family socialization as well as peer socialization in schools.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10887-023-09223-x.
... 9 Recent contributions in this literature establish that the forces of natural selection that operated in the Malthusian epoch selected traits that were complementary to the growth process and contributed ultimately to the transition from pre-industrial stagnation to modern economic growth. In particular, Galor and Moav (2002) and Galor and Klemp (2019) demonstrate the selection of the growth-enhancing predisposition towards child quality during the Malthusian regime, Galor and Michalopoulos (2012) demonstrate the rise in the prevalence of entrepreneurial spirit, and Galor and Ozak (2016) highlight the emergence of futureoriented mindset. 10 This study complements the interesting studies in this literature by developing a Malthusian model with natural selection of human species (with differences in fertility cost, fertility preference, hunting productivity and labor supply) to explore human evolution. ...
Why are Homo sapiens the only human species living on this planet? Homo sapiens have lived on this planet for about 300,000 years. During most of their existence, early modern humans shared this planet with other archaic humans, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. Why did the other archaic humans become extinct? To explore this question, this study develops a Malthusian model with natural selection of human species to explore how population dynamics of one group of humans may cause the extinction of another group. In my model, different groups of humans engage in hunting-gathering. The larger group of humans can occupy more land. Therefore, the expansion of one population causes the other population to shrink in a Malthusian economy. Which human population shrinks or even becomes extinct depends on structural parameters in the Malthusian model.
