This article surveys an influential new research program on historical paths of institutional development and their consequences for growth. The research program exploits the experience of European colonialism as a kind of "natural experiment" whose results bear on the way institutions affect...

All over the world, people are prevented from participating fully in society through mechanisms that go beyond the structural and institutional barriers that rational choice theory identifies ( - poverty, exclusion by law or force, taste-based or statistical discrimination, and externalities...

All over the world, people are prevented from participating fully in society through mechanisms that go beyond the structural and institutional barriers that rational choice theory identifies (―poverty, exclusion by law or force, taste-based or statistical discrimination, and externalities...

Economists seeking explanations for the global financial crisis of 1997-99 are reaching consensus that a major factor was weak financial institutions, which resulted in part from inadequate government regulations. At the same time many developing countries are struggling with an overregulated...

"Twelve years ago, when I was chief economist of the World Bank, I suggested that the major challenge to development economics was learning the lessons of the previous several decades: a small group of countries, mostly in Asia, but a few in other regions, had had phenomenal success, beyond...

Economists seeking explanations for the global financial crisis of 1997-99 are reaching consensus that a major factor was weak financial institutions, which resulted in part from inadequate government regulations. At the same time many developing countries are struggling with an overregulated...

Twelve years ago, when I was chief economist of the World Bank, I suggested that the major challenge to development economics was learning the lessons of the previous several decades: a small group of countries, mostly in Asia, but a few in other regions, had had phenomenal success, beyond...