This article looks at the deregulation of US prison labor in the 1970s and 1980s, and the use of prison labor in information technology (IT) and digital electronics supply chains. The article, on one hand, locates the effort to deregulate prison labor in US electronics firms’ search for cheap labor enclaves and the uneven development of the postwar United States. At the same time, the article situiates this deregulatory turn in the progressive reforms of the 1970s. These reforms, which occurred first at the state and local levels, sought to promote prisoner welfare, provide opportunities for “self-help,” and rationalize the allocation of state and local resources in light of rising inflation. As such, the article complicates narratives of the rise of neoliberalism, which center issues like “lost confidence” in the efficacy of federal social welfare programs, breaches in public trust following Watergate, the 1973 oil shock, knock-on effects of New Deal and Great Society programs, or emerging “family values” and racist dog-whistle politics. It also frames the labor history of digital electronics in a way that supports an analysis of the relationship between capitalist development and US federalism aongside the particularities of firm-level motivation, insitutional inertia, and prevailing political ideology. Current discussions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and corrections largely focus on the use of incarcerated persons to train AI algorithms or the use of AI systems to surveil prisoners. However, this article centers the growth of tech supply chains in the 1970s and 1980s as an important precursor to the development of contemporary AI technology and firms.

This paper develops a unified framework combining corrected National Accounts, dynamic social tables, and capital-income allocation to reconstruct long-run inequality, allowing the calculation of overall inequality, labor inequality, and extended-income inequality. The evidence indicates a decline in overall inequality alongside a contrasting rise in labor inequality from the late 1950s to 1970. However, oil-price shocks after 1973 had distributionally asymmetric and non-linear effects on overall inequality, whereas labor inequality exhibits a sign-dependent response. Furthermore, in-kind transfers in education and health substantially lowered overall inequality. Nevertheless, oil wealth did not function as a sustained equalizing force; post-1970s rent volatility, institutional weaknesses, and labor-market fragmentation reinforced a distributional regime in which gains concentrated at the top during booms while losses were widely shared during slumps. The Venezuelan case illustrates how reliance on publicly owned natural resources, absent strong institutions and policies, can evolve into a persistent growth and distributional failure.

Amid ecological civilization construction, coordinating environmental protection and economic development across administrative jurisdictions is increasingly urgent. As an important institutional arrangement for balancing inter-regional ecological interests, the effectiveness of the horizontal river basin ecological compensation policy is crucial for future watershed protection policy design. Based on a theoretical model, this study uses the multi-period difference-in-differences method to examine the policy's environmental and economic impacts on 529 county-level units in the Yellow River Basin. Results show that first, the policy significantly reduces pollutant emission intensity and promotes green economic growth in compensated regions. Second, it achieves environmental–economic synergy through industrial upgrading, technological innovation and energy conservation. Third, the synergy effect is stronger in areas with severe water pollution, gentle terrain and non-poverty status. Finally, fiscal transfer payments and human capital accumulation positively moderate this synergy. This study provides new implications for watershed governance and ecological compensation policy.

Mongolia is often cited as a post-communist democratic success, yet its mineral wealth has not produced broad-based development. This article explains the paradox through the limited-access order framework of North, Wallis, and Weingast, arguing that a formally open polity coexists with an economy in which rents remain captured by a dominant coalition. Tracing the extractive sector across three stages – privatization (1990–1997), resource-nationalist contestation (1998–2012), and investor-protection rebalancing (2013–present) – it shows how three external mechanisms operating in sequence – international financial institutions, foreign direct investment, and transnational legal ordering – successively reshaped the rent structure and the coalition. Following the capacity of non-elite actors to contest rent distribution, substantive openness peaked in the 2000s and then narrowed sharply as economic policy was insulated from democratic pressure. Mongolia thus shows how mineral rents and external actors entrench limited-access logic rather than dissolving it.

This article examines East German experts’ participation in development projects in Mongolia and their conceptions of environments during the Cold War. Starting in the 1950s, East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR) and Mongolia intensified economic ties that aimed to industrialise Mongolia and align with communist objectives. The endeavours were intended to provide development aid, though they also provided the GDR with access to natural resources it could not obtain domestically. Drawing on sources from numerous German archives, this article argues that East German development projects followed broader patterns of exploitation and consumption between Europe and the Global South after the Second World War. Communist trade relations dissolved with the end of the Cold War, but they set the stage for trade and environmental impacts that have continued to this day.

Economic and geospatial drivers of conflict are established, yet aggregate analyses often obscure subnational risk patterns. This study develops a high-resolution risk methodology for fragile, resource-rich states by combining spatial econometrics with the greed-grievance framework. Using a Bayesian approach based on integrated nested Laplace approximation and stochastic partial differential equations, we examine how socio-economic development, natural resources, energy infrastructure, and 14 spatial variables shape four conflict typologies in Nigeria between 1997 and 2023. Results show that wealth reduces conflict risk, while ethnic fractionalization and proximity to resources have actor-specific effects. Petroleum endowments and power infrastructure increase organized rebel and militia activity, whereas ethnic dynamics mainly drive riots. Predictive risk maps support infrastructure planning, supply chain risk mitigation, and targeted stabilization policies.

What repressive strategies do dictators use to maintain regime stability as anti-government movements rise under conditions of economic growth? We investigate the changing function of authoritarian repression and the ways in which dictators accommodated rising opposition during Taiwan’s period of authoritarian rule. Using time-series data spanning 39 years (1949–1988), this article analyses the relationship between economic development, opposition movements, and shifts in repression strategies under the Kuomintang (KMT) rule. Drawing on historical documents and statistical analysis, we argue that economic development influences patterns of repression. With economic growth, autocrats tend to adopt selective repression rather than indiscriminate violence (e.g., mass killings), as the latter risks inciting greater social unrest and endangering regime stability. Using an additive dynamic linear model (ADLM), our findings suggest that economic development, when coupled with rising social movements, compels dictators to rely on less severe yet more targeted forms of coercion. While this adaptation may temporarily bolster regime control amid economic growth and social unrest, it may ultimately undermine the foundation of long-term authoritarian resilience. This work bridges the gap between repression literature and modernisation theory by demonstrating that authoritarian decision-making in repressive policies plays a crucial role in shaping the fate of both dictatorships and opposition movements.

This study treats the selection of land conservation and intensive use model counties as a quasi-natural experiment. Using Chinese county-level panel data, we evaluate the multidimensional impacts of the land conservation and intensive use policy (LCIUP). We find that LCIUP reduced PM2.5 concentrations in counties while simultaneously lowering per capita GDP, exerting a positive effect on environmental quality but a negative inhibitory effect on economic growth, showing a distinct environment–economy asymmetry. LCIUP restricts industrial land supply and curbs the entry of polluting enterprises, but fails to facilitate industrial transformation and upgrading. Counties reliant on secondary industries face significant industrial transformation lock-in challenges, while those with substantial market potential can achieve dual economic and environmental goals. Green finance policies effectively complement LCIUP to promote industrial transformation and upgrading, whereas technological innovation and talent attraction policies currently lack such synergy. Cost–benefit analysis confirms that LCIUP’s marginal environmental benefits outweigh economic losses.

How do people perceive the utility of redistribution? Support for redistribution is commonly understood as being determined by self‐interest in a way that is monotonically proportional to expected net transfers. However, this would imply that average support for redistribution is static and unaffected by changes in the distribution of incomes. This study addresses this incongruence by integrating concepts from the literature on redistribution preferences, namely the diminishing marginal utility of income, inequity aversion and loss aversion. These concepts are formalized by making two distinctions regarding redistribution: absolute versus relative utility and gains versus losses. An analysis of the European/World Values Survey suggests that the preferences of the poor are determined by absolute gains, while the preferences of the rich are determined by relative losses. In other words, the poor care about how much they gain from redistribution, while the rich care about the share of their income that they lose from it. The findings have important implications for the relationships among public opinion, economic development and income inequality.