, which reforms are best? We address this question by empirically investigating the effects of institutions on financial … frictions, institutions affect investment. We find that improved corporate governance (e.g., less severe informational problems …

past, not in the future. The Internet fails as a Great Invention because much of its use involves substitution of existing … activities from one medium to another, because much Internet investment involves defence of market share rather than creation of … something of social value, because much Internet activity duplicates existing activity like mail order catalogues, while the …

enabled these groups to demand, obtain and sustain changes in institutions to protect their property rights. Furthermore, the … existing institutions placed some checks on the monarchy and particularly limited its control of overseas trading activities … the result of capitalist development driven by the interaction of late medieval institutions and the economic …

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 …

This paper opens with a discussion of the types of institutions that allow markets to perform adequately. While we can … identify in broad terms what these are, there is no unique mapping between markets and the non-market institutions that … institutions. A range of evidence indicates that participatory democracies enable higher-quality growth. …