Although it is often argued that wealth inequality matters more for economic growth than income inequality, this relationship has rarely been studied empirically, with a few exceptions covering a very restricted country sample or short timeframe. Leveraging hitherto unexploited wealth inequality data from the World Inequality Database, covering a panel of 165 countries between 1995 and 2019, we document a negative and statistically significant relationship between wealth inequality and economic growth. A one standard deviation increase in the wealth Gini coefficient within countries is associated with a 0.34 percentage points decline in growth rates. Instrumental variables support a causal interpretation of the results. The results survive a large battery of robustness checks, and we find no evidence to suggest a heterogeneous relationship.

How does conflict exposure affect trust? We hypothesize that direct (first-hand) experience with conflict induces parochialism: trust towards out-groups worsens, but trust towards in-groups, owing to positive experiences of kin solidarity, may improve. Indirect exposure to conflict through third-party accounts, on the other hand, reduces trust toward everyone, arguably owing to negativity bias. We find consistent support for our hypotheses in a lab-in-the-field experiment in Maluku, Indonesia, which witnessed a salient Christian-Muslim conflict during 1999–2002, as well as in three cross-country datasets exploiting temporal and spatial variation in exposure to violence. Our results help resolve a seeming contradiction in the literature and inform policies on resolving conflicts.

Information asymmetries are pervasive in many industries and can result in large losses in consumer welfare. Does providing product quality information result in improved consumer decision-making? We study this question in a market where quality is notoriously hard to determine ex ante: the residential energy market. Using a discrete choice experiment (N = 1,002), we document a substantial willingness-to-pay (37–45 % of the median bill) for four service quality attributes (transparency, agency, authenticity, and convenience). In an incentivized search task (N = 432), we show that how quality information is presented matters: consumers who view information in the form of ratings and stamps of approval are (i) 4 % more likely to opt in to the search task, and (ii) 20 % more likely to correctly identify given levels of quality, relative to consumers who are provided with bar graphs, pie charts, and text. Finally, using a decision experiment (N = 510) with real company names familiar to our participants, we find that the provision of quality information increases choices of the best-rated company more than 20-fold, relative to the control scenario where quality information is absent, in which consumers select companies predominantly on price and brand awareness. Our findings are applicable to other markets in which information asymmetries are present, where policymakers should consider interventions that promote transparency and quality information provision.

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.

Do crises erode trust in government? To answer this question, we leverage the quasi-experimental setting of the sharply increased military threat to the neutral country of Switzerland during the two world wars as an exogenous shock. In doing so, we exploit a unique feature of Swiss politics: government issuance of pre-referenda voting recommendations. We use constituent adherence to government recommendations as a behavioral proxy for trust in government, measured in real time prior to, during, and after the crisis. Our empirical estimates provide strong evidence that constituents are significantly less likely to follow governmental voting recommendations during wartime.

Mental health is a neglected health issue in developing countries. We test if mental health issues are particularly likely to occur among some of the most vulnerable children in developing countries: those that work. Despite falling in recent decades, child labor still engages 168 million children across the world. While the negative impacts of child labor on physical health are well documented, the effect of child labor on a child's psychosocial wellbeing has been neglected. We investigate this issue with a new dataset of 947 children aged 12–18 years from 750 households in 20 villages across five districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Our purpose-built survey allows for a holistic approach to the analysis of child wellbeing by accounting for levels of happiness, hope, emotional wellbeing, self-efficacy, fear and stress. We use a variety of econometric approaches, some of which utilize household-level fixed effects and account for differences between working and nonworking siblings. We document a robust, large and negative association between child labor and most measures of psychosocial wellbeing. The results are robust to a battery of exercises, including tests for selection on unobservables, randomization inference, instrumental variable techniques, and falsification exercises.

Supposedly well-intentioned dictators are often cited as drivers of economic growth. We examine this claim in a panel of 133 countries from 1858 to 2010. Using annual data on economic growth, political regimes, and political leaders, we document a robust asymmetric pattern: growth-positive autocrats (autocrats whose countries experience larger-than-average growth) are found only as frequently as would be predicted by chance. In contrast, growth-negative autocrats are found significantly more frequently. Implementing regression discontinuity designs (RDD), we also examine local trends in the neighbourhood of the entry into power of growth-positive autocrats. We find that growth under supposedly growth-positive autocrats does not significantly differ from previous realizations of growth, suggesting that even the infrequent growth-positive autocrats largely "ride the wave" of previous success. On the other hand, our estimates reject the null hypothesis that growth-negative rulers have no effects. Taken together, our results cast serious doubt on the benevolent autocrat hypothesis.

This study documents a robust empirical pattern between moralizing gods, which prescribe fixed laws of morality, and conflict prevalence and fatalities, using spatially referenced data for Africa on contemporary conflicts and ancestral belief systems of individual ethnic groups prior to European contact. Moralizing gods are found to significantly increase conflict prevalence and casualties at the local level. The identification strategy draws on the evolutionary psychology roots of moralizing gods as a solution to the collective action problem in pre-modern societies. A one standard deviation increase in the likelihood of emergence of a moralizing god increases casualties by 18 to 36% and conflict prevalence by 4 to 8% approximately.

Using data for political regimes, income and human capital for a sample of 141 countries over the periods 1820–2000 and 1500–2000, this research examines the income and growth effects of democracy when human capital, among other key variables, is controlled for. Linguistic distance-weighted foreign democracy is used as an instrument for domestic democracy. Democracy is found to be a significant determinant of income and growth and the result is robust to various estimation methods and covariates. We find that a one-standard deviation increase in democracy is associated with a 44–98% increase in per capita income.