Open Access
Movilidad y desigualdad regional en la Unión Europea
(2002) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Pascual Arzoz, Pedro; Rapún Gárate, Manuel; Economía; Ekonomia
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la movilidad de la distribución de la renta por habitante a escala regional en la Unión Europea durante el período 1977-1996, con el fin de aportar elementos complementarios sobre la naturaleza de la desigualdad interregional. Para ello se calculan una serie de indicadores utilizados habitualmente en el estudio dinámico de la distribución interpersonal de la renta. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que el nivel de movilidad intradistribucional es relativamente bajo. Asimismo, la evidencia empírica aportada muestra la existencia de una tendencia hacia la reducción de la movilidad regional a lo largo del período analizado que ha coincidido en el tiempo con el mantenimiento de la desigualdad interregional en la Unión Europea.
Open Access
Group concentration and violence: does ethnic segregation affect domestic terrorism?
(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper examines the link between ethnic segregation and domestic terrorism. The results show that ethnic segregation has a positive and significant effect on the incidence of domestic terrorism, which indicates that countries where ethnic groups are spatially concentrated face a higher risk of suffering this type of violence. This finding is not affected by the inclusion in the analysis of different covariates that may affect both ethnic segregation and domestic terrorism. The observed relationship between the degree of spatial concentration of ethnic groups and domestic terrorism is confirmed by various robustness tests. The results also suggest that the threat of secession is an important transmission channel linking ethnic segregation and domestic terrorism.
Open Access
Kin networks and quality of government: a regional analysis
(Springer, 2024-11-13) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
This paper examines the relationship between kin-based institutions and quality of government in the regions of Spain, France, and Italy. The results show that the rate of cousin marriage during the twentieth century is a strong predictor of the modern-day quality of government in the regions of these three countries. Regions characterized by a higher prevalence of cousin marriage tend to have on average worse governance outcomes. This finding holds after accounting for country fixed effects and different variables that may be correlated with both consanguinity and regional quality of government, including an extensive array of geographical, historical, and contemporary factors. The observed association between cousin marriage and quality of government persists when I utilize an instrumental variable approach that exploits regional variation in the degree of historical exposure to the marriage laws of the medieval Catholic Church to address potential endogeneity concerns. Furthermore, the paper also provides evidence consistent with the idea that the effect of cousin marriage on the quality of government operates through its impact on a series of cultural traits such as impersonal trust, fairness, and conformity-obedience.
Open Access
Negative externalities in cropping decisions: private versus common land
(2013) Benito Ostolaza, Juan Miguel; Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Osés Eraso, Nuria; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper analyzes to what extent the definition of property rights affects cropping decisions when these decisions generate negative externalities. To that end, we implement an experimental study where agents make cropping decisions in two different treatments: private and common land. The results show that there are no statistically significant differences between the two treatments in the contribution to the negative externality, thus revealing that the definition of property rights does not affect cropping decision in this context. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the implication of the agents in activities generating negative externalities tends to increase over time, thus amplifying its adverse consequences.
Open Access
Do wealth levels affect the contribution to negative externalities?
(Elsevier, 2020) Benito Ostolaza, Juan Miguel; Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Osés Eraso, Nuria; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
This paper experimentally explores the link between poverty and decisions that lead environmental degradation. In the experiment, individuals with different wealth levels play a game that describes environmental degradation as a contribution to an activity that generates a negative externality. The experimental data show that wealth levels not related to the environment (exogenous poverty) play no significant role in environmental decisions. However, the variation in wealth as a consequence of the contribution to environmental degradation (endogenous poverty) affects the behavior of individuals, that enter a spiral of poverty and environmental degradation. These results suggest the existence of a poverty-environment trap.
Open Access
Fiscal decentralization and internal conflict: an empirical investigation
(2013) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper examines the relationship between fiscal decentralization and internal conflict in 77 countries during the period 1972-2000. The results show that the devolution of scal power to subnational tiers of government reduces the incidence of civil conflict. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of the degree of political decentralization and of a number of control variables commonly employed in the literature. Likewise, the observed relationship does not depend on the estimation strategy or the specific measures used to quantify the degree of fiscal decentralization and the incidence of civil conflicts within the various countries.
Open Access
Education and gender bias in the sex ratio at birth: evidence from India
(Duke University Press, 2010-02-01) Echavarri, Rebeca; Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE
This article investigates the possible existence of a nonlinear link between female disadvantage in natality and education. To this end, we devise a theoretical model based on the key role of social interaction in explaining people¿s acquisition of preferences, which justifies the existence of a nonmonotonic relationship between female disadvantage in natality and education. The empirical validity of the proposed model is examined for the case of India, using district-level data. In this context, our econometric analysis pays particular attention to the role of spatial dependence to avoid any potential problems of misspecification. The results confirm that the relationship between the sex ratio at birth and education in India follows an inverted U-shape. This finding is robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables in the analysis, and to the choice of the spatial weight matrix used to quantify the spatial interdependence between the sample districts.
Open Access
Geografía y dinámica de la desigualdad regional en la Unión Europea
(2002) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Gil Canaleta, Carlos; Pascual Arzoz, Pedro; Rapún Gárate, Manuel; Economía; Ekonomia
¿Son permanentes o temporales los desequilibrios de renta entre regiones? El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la evolución de la desigualdad regional en renta por habitante en la Unión Europea en el período 1977-1999. A diferencia de la literatura tradicional sobre convergencia, el método de trabajo empleado se basa en el cálculo de un conjunto de medidas utilizadas en el estudio dinámico de la distribución personal de la renta. Ahora bien, como la unidad de referencia es la región y no el individuo, procederemos a introducir en el análisis la dimensión poblacional. De esta manera, los indicadores calculados serán estadísticos ponderados de acuerdo con la población relativa. Asimismo, las diferentes medidas se obtienen para diversos niveles de desagregación temporal y geográfica, con el fin de detectar posibles patrones de comportamiento diferenciados en el tiempo y en el espacio.
Open Access
Kin-based institutions and state capacity
(Elsevier, 2025-06-01) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
This paper examines the relationship between kin-based institutions and state capacity. The results show that the intensity of kinship networks is a strong predictor of present-day state capacity, both across and within countries. Societies historically characterized by more intensive kinship systems tend to have weaker states today. This finding holds after accounting for various variables that may be correlated with both kinship network intensity and state capacity, including a broad range of geographic, historical, and contemporary factors. The results are also robust when employing an instrumental variable approach that exploits plausibly exogenous variation in historical exposure to the marriage laws of the medieval Catholic Church. Additionally, the analysis reveals that societies with intensive kin-based institutions typically exhibit lower political centralization. Given the essential role of political centralization in establishing state capacity, this finding helps explain the negative association between kinship intensity and state capacity.
Open Access
Does globalization promote civil war? An empirical research
(2015) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Manotas Hidalgo, Beatriz; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper investigates the empirical relationship between globalization and in-trastate conflict in a sample of 160 countries over the period 1970-2009. To that end, we use a measure of globalization that distinguishes the social and political dimensions of integration from the economic dimension, thus allowing us to adopt a broader perspective than in most of existing studies and examine the effect of these three distinct aspects of globalization on civil violence. The results of the paper show that the degree of integration with the rest of the world contributes significantly to increasing the incidence of civil wars, in direct contrast to arguments which defend that globalization has the beneficial effect of deterring internal armed conficts. In particular, the dimension of globalization that most robustly relates with internal confict is economic integration. Our findings are not affected by the inclusion of additional explanatory variables in the analysis, or by changes in the definition of civil war. Likewise, the relationship observed between the degree of integration and civil violence does not seem to be driven by countries located in the most confictive regions in the world.