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Social Indicators Research

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04.11.2020 | Original Research

Direct and Indirect Effects of Individualism and Institutions on Homicides

verfasst von: Vinicius V. Zanchi, Philipp Ehrl, Daniel T. G. N. Maciel

Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research | Ausgabe 3/2021

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Abstract

The present paper evaluates whether people in highly individualistic cultures have a lower propensity to commit homicides, using data from 70 countries. Several previous papers report a significant negative correlation between these two variables, but it is not well established whether the effect of culture on this form of violent crime is direct or indirect. We estimate a structural equation model that includes: (a) the possibility that either culture or institutions affect the homicide rate, (b) a link between individualism and institutions and (c) credible exogenous information used as an instrumental variable for individualism. Our results show that individualistic nations generate a more effective judicial system, which is mainly responsible for the variation in homicide rates across countries. That is, individualism affects homicides only indirectly through the quality of legal institutions. We also find that different types of institutions have a similar relation to individualism, however, the moderating effect on homicides is more pronounced for legal or political institutions than for economic institutions.

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Note that we use the term individualism-collectivism because it is a well-established in the academic literature (not only in economics) and it makes clear that we use Hofstede’s measure. Some leading authors in the field, such as Greif and Tabellini (2017), however, seem to have a certain reservation against this terminology and they refer to a corporative vs. kin-based organization of societies. The term individualistic-collectivist is reserved for the explicit reference to the value system of these societies. We try to explain, as good as possible, which values and attitudes are related to individualistic and collectivist societies in the Hofstede’s terminology and we advise those readers who feel uncomfortable with this expression to recall the corporative vs. kin-based terminology.

The PSTV has been applied in a growing number of papers that establish a link between historical disease prevalence and macro-level outcomes such as economic growth (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2017), income inequality and governmental redistribution (Nikolaev et al. 2017; Gründler and Köllner 2018), economic and political institutions (Nikolaev and Salahodjaev 2017; Thornhill and Fincher 2014), and innovation (Bennett and Nikolaev 2020).

A factor that complicates the econometric analysis considerably is the possibility that formal and informal institutions may co-evolve (Alesina and Giuliano 2015). For example, as a country maintains well-functioning and evermore solid (judicial or monetary) institutions, informal norms such as honesty may also change over time.

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Titel: Direct and Indirect Effects of Individualism and Institutions on Homicides
verfasst von: Vinicius V. Zanchi
Philipp Ehrl
Daniel T. G. N. Maciel
Publikationsdatum: 04.11.2020
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research / Ausgabe 3/2021
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02531-4

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