Abstract The study of institutions and economic history was much influenced by Ronald Coase and Douglass North, in particular with Douglas North’s notion of government as an endogenous outcome of institution competition. Although Max Weber articulated a concept of government as a monopoly of...

Abstract This study extents the literature on responses to a recent World Bank report on the African poverty tragedy by assessing the effect of globalisation on inclusive human development in 51 African countries for the period 1996–2011. Political, economic, social and general globalisation...

Abstract This paper introduces the concept of ‘ritual’ for analysing the interaction between informal and formal institutions, taking land property rights in South China as an empirical case. By ritual, we refer to public actions that involve artefacts and create common knowledge about...

Abstract Is there a way of performing labor and doing work – a central activity that has so far occupied humans – that aligns with or even amplifies the core dynamics of a democratic society? This article answers in the affirmative by introducing a model of labor named homo faber based on a...

Abstract The present paper aims to use the case of China Development Bank (CDB) to tackle the fundamental question of why development banks in an effort to shed light on the broader debate about the role of state in economic development. By delving deeper into the role of CDB in incubating the...

Abstract This short essay, delivered at a panel meeting entitled “The Legacy of Ronald Coase,” documents the influence of Coase’s work on the recently published book, Stateless Commerce .

Abstract Janet Landa interprets informal economic network of traders or middlemen as an institution for lowering transaction costs in communities that have not developed reliable legal infrastructure for enforcing contracts. In economics, Landa has pioneered the study of trust in trade networks...

Abstract This paper explores the ideas of development and the role of the state in economic development and institutional change from the New Structural Economics perspective. We argue that economic structures – including the structure of technology and industry, and hard and soft...

Abstract The writings of Ronald Coase, along with those of Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, on the theory of property rights, transaction cost economics, and the economics of institutions have yielded powerful insights and transformed many areas of economics. The seminal paper of Ronald Coase...