Documents Bjornskov, Christian 4 results

"The principal focus in the substantial literature on impediments to economic development has been on the inadequacies of policies and governance. However, successful economic development requires effectiveness of markets and incentives for investment, which in turn require trust. This paper reports on trust in a development context. The paper uses trust experiments, a post-experiment survey, and econometric analysis relating trust to identity and other personal attributes in the setting of Montenegro, a small, recently-independent, post-socialist, post-crisis society. External validity was sought by providing sufficient material reward to balance identity-related expressive motives and by having two groups of subjects, one usual university students and another group that, while also students, was somewhat older and had had greater market or commercial experience. The paper reviews cultural priors that can be expected to affect trust and distinguishes between generalized trust that can be socially beneficial and particularized trust that can be disadvantageous for development. The empirical results suggest that trust among private individuals is not an impediment to development in Montenegro. As a result, policy reform can improve economic and social outcomes. However, the results redirect the focus to issues of governance and political entrenchment as potential explanations for impediments to development."

"Respect for human rights is a value upon which the European Union is founded, and a precondition for an aspirant state to be considered as a candidate for membership. Contrasting the fundamental rights discourse developing in the EU enlargement context and the situation within the EU, this European Policy Analysis shows the recurrent distortion between internal and external EU fundamental rights regimes, and sheds light on the on-going discussion to find ways of addressing it."

"This article returns to the discussion of how income inequality affects economic growth. The main argument of the article is that economic freedom is likely to mediate the association between inequality and growth. In a panel of 300 observations from six 5-year periods across the 50 U.S. states, I employ five different measures of inequality. The results show that across measures, the growth effects of inequality turn more positive with more economic freedom. The moderating effects are mainly driven by measures of public sector consumption. "