Extensive research has documented the importance of social trust for economic development, yet the origins of trust remain largely unexplored. This paper examines the historical relationship between risk, cooperation and the emergence of social trust. I hypothesize that norms of trust developed...

This research attempts to explain the large differences in the early diffusion of the mafia across different areas of Sicily. We advance the hypothesis that, after the demise of Sicilian feudalism, the lack of publicly provided property-right protection from widespread banditry favored the...

We study the evolution of employment and wage outcomes in Chinese SOEs during the first decade of economic reforms, studying a panel of data for almost 1000 enterprises covering the years 1980-90. Despite the consensus on the persistence of labor redundancy in the SOE sector, we find that...

We examine the contrast in the experience of ownership reforms between urban SOEs and rural TVEs using a panel of industrial enterprises in Nanjing municipality for the period from 1994 to 2001. Our objectives are twofold. First, we study how the reform program of “grasp the large and let go...