Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in well-being has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being...

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being...

Although they would yield social benefits, some political projects may not be implemented in democracies. Prominent examples are the reform of European labour markets, the reduction of government debt or the reduction of greenhouse gases. We suggest introducing political contracts to make...

The renewal of patents and their geographical scope for protection constitute two essential dimensions in a patent’s life, and probably the most frequently used patent value indicators. The intertwining of these dimensions (the geographical scope of protection may vary over time) makes their...

This paper analyzes how private decisions and public policies are shaped by personal and societal preferences (values), material or other explicit incentives (laws) and social sanctions or rewards (norms). It first examines how honor, stigma and social norms arise from individuals’ behaviors...

Legal institutions are critical for the development of market-based economies. This paper defines legal institutions and discusses different indicators to measure their quality and efficiency. It surveys a large historical and empirical literature showing the importance of legal institutions in...

This paper discusses the design of appropriate institutions for trade policy-making in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on US and EU experience it argues that legislatures should set the broad parameters, leaving commodity-specific detail to the executives. Sectoral Ministries, e.g. of...

In this paper we analyze the impact of government and private ownership of banks on firms’ probability to innovate. We estimate firms’ decision to innovate and their selection of a main lender for a sample of 9000 German manufacturing companies. Since these two decisions may be...

This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002, and information on the duration and content of patent and price control...

The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desired over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes on issues that it deems most...