Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies

Etienne Le Rossignol and Sara Lowes

No 17476, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Moral universalism, the extent to which individuals exhibit similar altruism and trust towards in-group and out-group members, varies widely across societies. We test the hypothesis from anthropology that the requirements of transhumant pastoralism – a livelihood in which populations seasonally migrate and herd livestock – made individuals highly interdependent and cohesive within groups but hostile to individuals beyond the radius of extended kin. Using global data, we find that historical reliance on transhumant pastoralism is strongly predictive of greater in-group relative to out-group trust. This result is consistent across countries, between residents of the same country, among second-generation migrants, and with an instrumental variable strategy. We find evidence that these results are specific to transhumant pastoralism. The effects are particularly pronounced when transhumant pastoralists interact with groups that rely on other forms of economic production and in areas that are prone to climate shocks and conflict. Finally, we explore the economic implications of limited moral universalism. We find that greater reliance on transhumant pastoralism is associated with less objective promotion criteria within firms and smaller firm size.

Keywords: Transhumant pastoralism; Trust; Moral universalism; Kinship; Culture; Firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N9 O1 Z1 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17476 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies (2022)
Working Paper: Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies (2022)
Working Paper: Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies (2022)
Working Paper: Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies (2022)
Working Paper: Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17476

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17476

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().