 Institutions, abilities, and the allocation of talent: Evidence from Russian regionsMichael Alexeev, Timur Natkhov and Leonid Polishchuk Journal of Comparative Economics, 2024, vol. 52, issue 1, 271-296 Abstract: Strong institutions attract talent to productive activities, whereas weak ones raise the appeal of rent seeking. We propose a theory that describes the impact of institutions on occupational choices over a range of abilities, and predicts that the sensitivity of such choices to the quality of institutions rises in talent when the latter increases from low to intermediate levels, and declines thereafter. To test these predictions empirically, we use a unique micro data set describing the choices of fields of studies by newly enrolled university students in Russian regions in 2011–2014. We show that the popularity of sciences and engineering, on one hand, and law and public administration, on the other, are linked to the quality of regional investment climate and another measure of institutional quality in a manner predicted by our theory. Keywords: Institutions; Allocation of talent; Rent seeking; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:52:y:2024:i:1:p:271-296 DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2023.11.003 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier |
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