Firms that maintain no formal record of actions and events would hardly be considered well managed. Yet, organizations …

We investigate the role of national institutions on regional development in a novel framework. We exploit the fact that … correlation between formal national institutions and economic development has to be carefully interpreted. … institutions. Using both a matching-type and a regression discontinuity approach we show that differences in countrywide …

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development … association between pre-colonial ethnic political centralization and regional development. This pattern is not driven by … positive association between pre-colonial political complexity and contemporary development also holds within pairs of adjacent …

We examine the link between pre-colonial statehood and contemporary regional African development, as reflected in …-country analysis reveals a strong positive correlation between pre-colonial political centralization and contemporary development (and …

shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals … a strong association between pre-colonial centralization and contemporary comparative development both across and within … countries. We also document that the strong link between pre-colonial political centralization and regional development -as …

achieved this rapid development by following orthodox economic policies. How Botswana sustained these policies is a puzzle … policies were chosen in Botswana because good institutions, which we refer to as institutions of private property, were in … place. Why did institutions of private property arise in Botswana, but not other African nations? We conjecture that the …

colonial rule was to create financial incentives to adopt development policies that encouraged government spending. …

We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining income levels around the … world, using recently developed instruments for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of … institutions 'trumps' everything else. Once institutions are controlled for, measures of geography have at best weak direct effects …