Cultural, Historical and Geo-Climatic Background of Socio-Economic Progress (with Focus on Family Structure and Corruption)

Why are some societies rich, democratic, non-violent and have well-functioning bureaucracies, while others are less well off, often authoritarian and mired in corruption or violent conflicts? This research is an attempt to trace the most distant roots of current day institutions. The first part focuses on the most ancient and basic societal institution – namely the preindustrial family. We refer to the determinants of historical family structure and investigate its effect on current day levels of interpersonal trust and liberal voting. The last chapter of the manuscript is devoted to the corruption that may take different shapes and is shown to be embedded in social values, religion, history and social networks. These seemingly different topics can be aligned in a clear path dependence that sheds light on the evolutionary trajectories of societies. To begin with, we investigate the foremost geo-climatic exogenous factors that determined historical family structure, then we refer to the social values associated with particular family features, and finally, we demonstrate that current day institutions e.g. corruption are embedded in these longstanding social values.