A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

This paper describes institutions of direct democracy between 1997 and 2003 in 26 Swiss cantons (states), specifically the statutory initiative and referendum, the constitutional initiative, and the fiscal referendum. In particular, it discusses their applications, but also the legal...

Many empirical studies are ambiguous about whether good formal institutions are conducive to subjective well-being or not. Possibly, this ambiguity is caused by cross-section models that do not account for unobserved cultural and institutional effects. Using the World Value Survey 1980-2005,...

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

The article describes the dual nature of business social responsibility: global and regional. The increased pressure of globalization produces a new stakeholder expectations and efforts of companies to conform to it. As a result of return reaction the growing requirements of International...

The article presents the critical review of physical and biological metaphors in the institutional economic theory. It is proved that physical (including mechanistic) analogies are most adequate for the associative characteristic of a statics and kinetics of institutional systems, and biological...