Professor Agustina Paglayan has a fascinating new book: “Raised to Obey”! She contends that mass primary education systems were primarily established to consolidate state authority and maintain social order. But what about industrialisation, democratisation or the Protestant Reformation? And why should education experts consider Political Economy? Book: https://www.amazon.com/Raised-Obey-Education-Princeton-Economic/dp/069126127X ..read more

The Ten Commandments must now be displayed in all Louisiana’s public school classrooms. The law, signed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry, requires poster-sized copies with easily readable text. Why is this happening? Is it unprecedented? Actually, it echoes the 1970s global religious revival. Threatened by liberal modernity, conservatives worldwide leveraged new technologies and defensively mobilised to institutionalise piety. In this podcast, I draw on my comparative research to highlight parallel trends in Uzbekistan, Kyrygzstan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the U.S ..read more

A new NBER paper by Barbara Fraumeni sheds light on how culture mediates gender gaps in education and employment. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31535 My Substack: https://draliceevans.substack.com/p/culture-and-job-in-asia ..read more

How exactly does low fertility affect economic growth, are UN population predictions accurate, what’s driving the decline in fertility, and what can be done? To answer these questions, I’m joined by the brilliant macro-economist, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde Read his recent paper: The Wealth of Working Nations https://www.nber.org/papers/w31914 ..read more

Professor Daron Acemoglu is famous for his careful empirical research, demonstrating the economic importance of institutions. But actually, he’s done a 180 to embrace culture! In this podcast we discuss his new theory of culture, what drives liberty and prosperity, the limits of democracy, and the importance of geography ..read more

Dr Oliver Kim has completed his PhD at Berkeley, recently appointed at Open Philanthropy. He does awesome research, carefully examining the drivers of structural transformation. We discussed: Why do you think East Asia is the only world region to have converged with the West? How have big data and computational tools changed our understanding of structural transformation? Oliver's website: https://oliverwkim.com/ His substack: https://www.global-developments.org ..read more

“Vikings is no. 1 from all the Saudi men ?”. Leila chuckled as we browsed top hits on Netflix. For only 30 Riyals (8 USD) a month, Saudis can tune into stories about uncovered pagans. A global feast of delights are now on offer - from Western films to women’s football. Rapid cultural change is afoot in Saudi Arabia, a unique experiment in top-down secularisation. But how can we as social scientists study such rapid cultural evolution in real-time, especially in an autocracy? In this podcast, I’ll highlight some exciting new methodologies. Buckle up ..read more

Culture is not a static inheritance, but a dynamic arena of ongoing struggle. From the mosques of Jakarta to the classrooms of Louisiana, from TikTok feeds to university lecture halls, ideological warfare rages. This podcast explores the complex interplay of several crucial factors shaping our cultural landscape: Contestation: Culture is a battlefield where competing ideologies clash, merge, and evolve. Prestigious actors and institutions are especially influential, as others look to them as successful. No norm is set in stone; instead, we see a perpetual push and pull between progressive and ..read more

Imagine: Elon Musk's tweet causes a cryptocurrency frenzy. Kim Kardashian’s outfit becomes an overnight fashion sensation. Daron Acemoglu and colleagues’ paper on settler mortality reshapes economic thinking. The Pope’s words influence millions globally. What links these diverse events? They’re all powerful manifestations of prestige bias. Psychologically, we seek guidance from those who’ve achieved success, looking to emulate their paths to prosperity and social approval. This creates a dynamic where the accomplished influence others, often reinforcing their own status in the process. From NB ..read more

During the World War I, the US federal government was short on civil servants and actively recruited women. Abhay Aneja, Silvia Farina, and Guo Xu find that men with multiple female colleagues were subsequently more likely to marry working women and father careerist daughters! Crucially, the effect is larger when men have many female colleagues and it becomes perfectly conventional. Paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32639 ..read more