How do people perceive the utility of redistribution? Support for redistribution is commonly understood as being determined by self‐interest in a way that is monotonically proportional to expected net transfers. However, this would imply that average support for redistribution is static and unaffected by changes in the distribution of incomes. This study addresses this incongruence by integrating concepts from the literature on redistribution preferences, namely the diminishing marginal utility of income, inequity aversion and loss aversion. These concepts are formalized by making two distinctions regarding redistribution: absolute versus relative utility and gains versus losses. An analysis of the European/World Values Survey suggests that the preferences of the poor are determined by absolute gains, while the preferences of the rich are determined by relative losses. In other words, the poor care about how much they gain from redistribution, while the rich care about the share of their income that they lose from it. The findings have important implications for the relationships among public opinion, economic development and income inequality.

Scholars continue to debate whether economic development affects regime type. This article argues that a clear relationship exists between development and the electoral component of democracy, but not – or at least less so – between development and other components of broader understandings of democracy. This is so because development enhances the power resources of citizens and elections provide a focal point for collective action. The theory is tested with two new datasets – Varieties of Democracy and Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy – that allow us to disaggregate the concept of democracy into meso‐ and micro‐level indicators. Results of these tests corroborate the theory: only election‐centred indicators are robustly associated with economic development. This may help to account for apparent inconsistencies across extant studies and shed light on the mechanisms at work in a much‐studied relationship. Further analysis shows that development affects electoral democracy by reducing electoral fraud, election violence and vote buying.

Most theories of cross-national variation in charitable giving have been tested only on samples of countries of Western European culture; this paper applies these theories to 114 countries, including 93 non-Western countries, using data from the Gallup World Poll. It finds strong support for economic and political theories of cross-national variation in charitable giving and partial support for religious and cultural theories. Theories effectively predict variation in giving in middle income non-Western countries but poorly predict variation in low-income non-Western countries. This suggests that economic development, not cultural or religious differences, separate non-Western countries from Western ones in patterns of giving behavior.

Capitalism is in trouble, or so we have been told. I argue that Adam Smith has a lot to teach us about the future of capitalism. I first examine recent discussions about the current challenges and criticisms against capitalism such as the productivity slowdown, waning competition, the role of globalization, rising inequality, and climate change. I emphasize that there are some global trends, but there are also important national and regional differences reflecting differences in institutions and policy. Not only natural-scientific technology, but also social-scientific technology—that is, governance, policy, and institutions—matter. Then, I explain what Smith can teach us. First, Adam Smith conceives a truly inclusive capitalism: he takes income distribution into account when he argues for the desirability of economic development. Second, inclusive capitalism requires broad formation and sharing of knowledge among people. Third, the expansion of exchange and trade has beneficial effects, but we should be aware of its distributional consequences. Fourth, institutions matter. Fifth, proper law and institutions—the “system of natural liberty”—are essential to a well-functioning market economy. However, the “system of natural liberty” is not automatically achieved. Policy and institutions are history-dependent; therefore, history matters.

Developing Consumers: A History of Wants and Needs in Postwar South America offers a comparative social and economic history of South America’s developmental decades, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. In the aftermath of World War II, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile implemented state-led strategies to secure economic sovereignty, raise living standards, and expand domestic markets. These policies made durable goods such as refrigerators, automobiles, and televisions increasingly available, yet access remained uneven across class, gender, and racial lines. By the 1960s, these commodities had become powerful symbols of modern well-being.

The dissertation examines how people experienced this transformation and how new forms of consumption reshaped ideas of welfare, citizenship, and inequality. By the decade’s end, it was clear that the developmental state could not deliver social mobility or universal access to modern comforts, leading to widespread frustration. Policy makers, marketing experts, and intellectuals debated how to “rationalize” consumption—deciding which needs should be guaranteed for all and which reflected elite privilege.

This brief paper aims to consider the impact of Israel’s settler-colonial measures on workers in the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) after October 2023. Although the ongoing war has been waged on the Gaza Strip, with devastating repercussions for lives and livelihoods in the Strip, Israeli colonial measures in the West Bank have had a grave impact on all segments of Palestinian society, including workers. These measures include: First; closure of the Israeli labor market in the face of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers. Second, broadening the system of movement restrictions within the West Bank which led to disruptions in local production and trade thus damaging private sector operations. Third; Israel’s continued withholding of Palestinian custom duty revenues with adverse impacts on workers in general but particularly public sector workers. To assess the impact of these measures, the paper utilizes a number of indices to assess the situation of these workers; including labor supply, unemployment, wage levels, distribution across sectors, informality, and workers’ rights. The paper finds a grave deterioration in the situation of workers in the labor market at all levels, with dire repercussions for workers and their families.

This article examines the geographical distribution of tuberculosis mortality in Italy from 1891 to 1951 and its relationship with industrialisation. During this period, industrialisation brought about profound changes, although it affected the north and south of the country unequally. During the same period, the incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis increased, and the disease became a major health problem. Tuberculosis spread mainly among industrial workers and in densely populated urban areas, where living and working conditions were often precarious. Overall, the incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis was significantly higher in the more industrialised provinces of the North than in the backward provinces of the South. This article shows a positive correlation between pulmonary tuberculosis mortality and the levels of provincial industrialisation.

We analyze the extent to which the prospects for economic development may relate to the environmental damages associated with economic activities. We consider an economic growth framework in which production activities generate polluting emissions which in turn negatively affect production capabilities, and publicly-funded abatement is pursued to mitigate such effects. Since the time preference is endogenously related to capital, abatement affects the size of the discount factor through its implications on capital accumulation. We show that the elasticity of environmental damages affects the optimal tax rate and thus the abatement level, which in turn determines whether the economy will end up in a stagnation or growth regime. This suggests that the cross-country heterogeneity in environmental damages may explain the different development patterns experienced by industrialized and developing economies. Our results are robust to the presence of productive public spending and two alternative forms of capital (clean and dirty capital).

This article analyzes the political ecology of modern Iran as envisioned in the report of Arthur Hills Gleadowe-Newcomen’s 1904–-05 Commercial Mission to South-Eastern Persia and a covert Persian counter-narrative penned by its military attaché, Mirza Riza Muhandis. The commercial ambitions of the British Empire in Qajar Iran involved a transformation of Iran’s environment. The critiques of these programs outlined in the travelogue of Mirza Riza Muhandis concern whom these interventions by science and engineering should serve. This case study highlights tensions over development and inequality at a critical moment in Iran’s history, just months before the beginnings of the 1906 Constitutional Revolution.

This paper investigates the magnitude and drivers of ethnic and religious disparities in Female Labor Force Participation (FLFP) in Syria. Using census data and the Gelbach decomposition method, the analysis reveals substantial FLFP gaps across groups, reaching up to 18 percentage points. To understand the factors underlying these gaps, the analysis exploits the heterogeneity in economic development, demographic profiles, educational attainment, and geography across towns and villages. The findings indicate that differences in age distribution, income levels, education, and public sector employment shares are the primary contributors to FLFP gaps. While social norms are often considered key determinants of FLFP, their role is assessed using gender parity indices for educational enrollment and attainment but shows little explanatory power for ethnic and religious disparities in FLFP. These results highlight the importance of structural economic and demographic factors over cultural constraints in shaping group differences in FLFP in Syria.

This research note presents a new dataset of comparable and consistently defined series on wage inequality in manufacturing in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela (LA6) from 1920 to 2011. There are also series of unskilled labor with a wider sectoral coverage. This resource provides sufficient data to inform us about trajectories and turning points across distinct developmental epochs. Overall, the evidence shows a steady rise in inter-industry wage inequality since c.1960 in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico and later in the rest. Additionally, a decline in white-collar premiums across the LA6 during state-led industrialization, followed by rising trends in the decades of export-led growth, and a reversal in the 2010s. Similar contrasting trends are observed in the wage dispersion of unskilled labor.

Using data from 74 countries, we uncover important differences in the association between financial literacy and preferences by the level of economic development. Patience is salient and positively associated to financial literacy in wealthier countries, i.e., countries with GDP per capita above the sample median. This association is not driven by a multitude of institutional or cultural factors known to be related to financial literacy. In impoverished countries, we document a higher level of financial literacy in countries with higher levels of risk-taking but lower levels of trust, positive reciprocity, and altruism. Countries’ legal origin drives most of the association with risk-taking, trust, and positive reciprocity while their religious composition drives the association between altruism and financial knowledge. Our findings underscore that financial education programs need to be tailored to the cultural aspect of group preferences and suggest what type of traits policies and programs ought to be reinforced in poorer countries.

We examine whether decriminalization of suicide in India following the 2017 Mental Health Act corresponds with changes in suicide mortality overall and by level of state development. Our study utilizes counts of suicides from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) across 35 Indian states from 2001 to 2020. The exposure variable is a binary indicator for the decriminalization of suicide following 2018. We use fixed-effect Poisson regression models that include population offsets and adjust for time trends, literacy, gross state domestic product and infant mortality. We find no relation between decriminalization of suicides and overall suicide mortality (Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR): 1.037; 95% CI (0.510–2.107)). Stratification by level of state development shows that less developed states saw an increase in suicide mortality by 1.9 times following decriminalization, compared to prior years (IRR: 1.859; 95% CI (1.028–3.364)). Our findings thus indicate that decriminalization did not coincide with a decline in suicide mortality in the country, thereby highlighting the need for improved mental health infrastructure and support in India, especially in less developed states.