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Full-Text Articles in Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies

Kinship, Fractionalization And Corruption, Mahsa Akbari, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Erik O. Kimbrough Aug 2019

Kinship, Fractionalization And Corruption, Mahsa Akbari, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Erik O. Kimbrough

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We examine the roots of variation in corruption across societies, and we argue that marriage practices and family structure are an important, overlooked determinant of corruption. By shaping patterns of relatedness and interaction, marriage practices influence the relative returns to norms of nepotism/favoritism versus norms of impartial cooperation. In-marriage (e.g. consanguineous marriage) generates fractionalization because it yields relatively closed groups of related individuals and thereby encourages favoritism and corruption. Out-marriage creates a relatively open society with increased interaction between non-relatives and strangers, thereby encouraging impartiality. We report a robust association between in-marriage practices and corruption both across countries and within …


Kinship Ties Across The Lifespan In Human Communities, Jeremy Koster, Dieter Lukas, David Nolin, Eleanor Power, Alexandra Alvergne, Ruth Mace, Cody T. Ross, Karen Kramer, Russell Graves, Mark Caudell, Shane Macfarlan, Eric Schniter, Robert Quinlan, Siobhan Mattison, Adam Reynolds, Chun Yi-Sim, Eric Massengill Jul 2019

Kinship Ties Across The Lifespan In Human Communities, Jeremy Koster, Dieter Lukas, David Nolin, Eleanor Power, Alexandra Alvergne, Ruth Mace, Cody T. Ross, Karen Kramer, Russell Graves, Mark Caudell, Shane Macfarlan, Eric Schniter, Robert Quinlan, Siobhan Mattison, Adam Reynolds, Chun Yi-Sim, Eric Massengill

ESI Publications

A hypothesis for the evolution of long post-reproductive lifespans in the human lineage involves asymmetries in relatedness between young immigrant females and the older females in their new groups. In these circumstances, inter-generational reproductive conflicts between younger and older females are predicted to resolve in favor of the younger females, who realize fewer inclusive fitness benefits from ceding reproduction to others. This conceptual model anticipates that immigrants to a community initially have few kin ties to others in the group, gradually showing greater relatedness to group members as they have descendants who remain with them in the group. We examine …