What role do institutional constraints and social norms play in determining persistent gender gapsin economic and political participation and have institutional reforms been successful in reducing these gaps? This paper argues that, at the roots of current gender inequalities, there are...

To understand why corruption has become the crucial issue for the latest generation of protest movements and uprisings, from Tunisia to Moldova and from India to Brazil, public corruption is best conceived as part of a broader social order context and not at individual level. Presuming...

The weak enforcement of a rule of law is closely related to the prevalence of corruption. Corruption involves different types of rule-violations by bureaucrats, politicians and businesses where power is misused for private benefit. Not surprisingly, corruption is correlated with the weak...

This background paper addresses four questions. They may seem to be independent, but I hope to show they are closely connected. The questions are: 1) What did Weber say when he defined the modern state as the organization with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence? 2) What conceptual...

This paper investigates whether legal reforms intended to create a market-friendly regulatory business environment have a positive impact on economic and financial outcomes. After conducting a critical review of the legal origins literature, the authors first analyze the evolution of legal rules...

In this paper, the authors use the lab to test a series of policy proposals designed to constrain rent-seeking behaviour in a policymaking context. The baseline governance game is conducted in the following way: subjects are randomly assigned to groups of four, with one subject randomly selected...

Here I explore the process leading to the formation of the state in two steps. In the first part of this research note, I examine the transition from stateless to state societies, that is, I characterize the conditions under which the state arises. In the second part, I analyze the consolidation...