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 investigates the determinants of economic growth emphasizing the role of institutional quality, social fragmentation, and increasing global integration on recent growth experience. Our longitudinal data consists of 103 countries covering the period 1992-2005. We find that democracies...

Impersonal exchange has been a major driver of economic development. But transactors with no stake in maintaining an ongoing relationship have little incentive to honor deals. Therefore, all economies have developed institutions to support honest trade and realize the gains of impersonal...

The Axial Age, which lasted between 800 B. C. E. and 200 B. C. E., covers an era in which the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in various geographic areas, and all three major monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were born between 1200 B. C....

This paper emphasizes that the evolution of religious institutions in Europe was influenced by the expansionary threat posed by the Ottoman Empire five centuries ago. This threat intensified in the second half of the 15th century and peaked in the first half of the 16th century with the Ottoman...

The Ottoman Empire had a profound impact in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa at the apogee of its power, covering the era between 1453 C. E. and 1699 C. E. In this paper, I exploit the empire’s unique culture and institutions to examine the roles of ethnicity and religion in conflict...

Ethnic and religious fractionalization have important effects on economic growth and development, but their role in internal violent conflicts has been found to be negligible and statistically insignificant. These findings have been invoked in refutation of the Huntington hypothesis, according...

Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Surveys, this paper studies the impact of fiscal decentralisation in Indonesia on local public spending across communities with different types of local institutions. Our results provide evidence of heterogeneity in access to public goods across...

In Deutschland wird eine umfassende Steuerstrukturreform bereits seit Jahren kontrovers diskutiert. Mit dem Eintritt der FDP in die Regierungsverantwortung erhält diese Debatte derzeit besondere Aktualität. Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass trotz oder gerade wegen leerer öffentlicher Kassen...

We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...