Large private enterprises in the ASEAN-5 economies have been, and remain, dominated by firms that share four common characteristics: (1) their ownership and control are concentrated among a handful of prominent business families; (2) most of these families have Chinese origins; (3) each family...

What do we know about the politics of corporate governance in emerging markets? While the state-level institutions have been amply explored, firm-level dynamics remain under-theorized. Complementing the orthodox emphasis on external finance as causal force behind the adoption of “minority...

How do property rights become secure? How does rule of law take hold in an economy? I use an original survey of 516 firms in Russia and Ukraine, as well as interview-based case studies, to re-examine these fundamental issues of political economy. Most states in the developing world lack the...

Political mobilization of business forces in the post-communist world has crucial implications for economic development and civil society. The emergence of strong cross-sectoral business associations during Putin's presidency challenges the prevailing view of Russia's political economy as an...

We use statistical data for the period 2000-2013 to compare the macro-level structure and the core institutions of the banking systems in China and Russia. Our main hypothesis is that, differences in the absolute size and socio-cultural features nothwithstanding, these two systems are...

To better understand the role of taxation in the emergence of states, this article presents an incomplete contract model of an agricultural society in which information asymmetries cause inefficient taxation, and hence outmigration, uprisings, and rent-seeking, but also urbanization. We propose...

This essay is the first sustained description, based on archival materials, of the use Zionist settlers in British Mandate-era Palestine made of the English private trust and trust company, and Mandate authorities' reactions to that use. An early, ill-fated attempt to create a family trust of...