Denis Ivanov (HSE) presents his paper “Do institutions cause social trust? Evidence from an institutional reform” on Tuesday, April 18th

NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are pleased to invite you to the joint seminar of Research Seminar on Diversity and Development.

The seminar takes place at HSE building on Shabolovka 26-4, room 4322.

The seminar begins at 5:00 p.m. on April 18, 2017.

Working language of the seminar is English.

We would like to ask everyone who requires a pass to the HSE to register for the seminar at https://goo.gl/forms/Sp9brZmfdE5nwX6k1 until 10 a.m. April 18.

«I attempt to disentangle a problem of causality between institutional quality and interpersonal trust using evidence from a natural experiment: mid-2000s institutional reforms in the post-Soviet nation of Georgia. The reforms following the 2003 Rose Revolution were swift and extensive, aiming mostly at combating corruption and organized crime, improving law enforcement and economic liberalization. At the same time, the neighboring nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics with cultural and economic background similar to the Georgian one, experienced no such change, thus becoming credible counterfactuals to Georgia.

To reduce unobservable heterogeneity between Georgia as a treatment group, and Armenia and Azerbaijanas a control group, I exploit the fact that republics borders during the Soviet era did not always reflected the settlement patterns of ethnic groups, thus creating a number of minorities separated from their ethnic kins by arbitrary borders that were internal within the USSR but have become international after the independence. In this particular case, Georgia has several districts with predominantly Armenian and Azeri population spanning along its border with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Comparing people of the same ethnic group on both sides of the border allows concentrating on differences in governance and formal institutions and to diminish possible confounding effect of culture-related heterogeneity.

Applying regression discontinuity design to the data from Life in Transition and Caucasian Barometer surveys, I find that Armenian and Azeri residents of Georgia have greater level of interpersonal trust than their counterparts in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Perceptions of corruption and rule of law are likely channels of influence.»