It is a typical case in the practice of reforms, when a reformer, who seeks to introduce an institution with desired properties, discovers that its immediate implementation is impossible because of resource, technological, cultural, political or institutional constraints. In this case, one has...

The theory of institutional traps, i.e. ineffective but stable institutions or behavior norms, is develope din connection with economic reforms. Mechanisms are described that cause a system to get into a trap and ways of going out of it are analyzed. Concepts of transformation costs and...

In our previous papers (Polterovich V., Popov V., 2007; Polterovich V., Popov V., Tonis A., 2006) it was shown that democratization (increase in the political rights index of the Freedom house in 1970-2000) can negatively affect economic growth, if the quality of institutions at the beginning of the...

One of the main obstacles for successful economic development is the formation of institutional traps, inefficient yet stable norms of behaviour. Domination of barter exchange, arrears, corruption and black market activities are examples of institutional traps that have hampered reforms in...

The economic "battle" that took place in Russia in 1992 consisted of the struggle between the liberally-oriented government and the labor collectives, the latter of which regarded the government's reform program as an attempt to encroach upon the established system of collective property. The...

Two myths have harmed many economies throughout the world. One is the theory of absolute advantage of central planning over the market mechanism, and the other is the belief that efficient markets develop spontaneously and quickly enough if appropriate economic legislation is established....

In this paper we analyze data on sustainability of democratic regimes in resource rich countries and suggest a model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy in some countries, but does not create any difficulties for a democratic system in other ones. Rate of...

An attempt is made to define main problems of the privatization theory and to present a survey of some results in this area. Two models are discussed that demonstrate paradoxical consequences of property right restrictions and dynamics of property right redistribution which entails a...

Any legislative framework is likely to generate different institutions or norms of behavior which the legislator occasionally could have never foreseen. I suggested a general pattern, on which inefficient, if stable, norms or institutions called institutional traps would form.

We suggest a dynamic game theoretic model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy. Stationary Markov perfect equilibria of this game with four players – Politician, Oligarch, Autocrat and Public (voters) – are analyzed. Choosing a rate of resource rent tax,...