The positive influences of institutions to economic growth, commonly measured by GDP per capita, have been intensively tested by many empirical studies. However, as the challenges of pollution, corruption, and inequality raise up, the quality of economic development and how to achieve the good...

This paper explores the problem of credible commitment that public officials face with regard to institutional reform. Doug North points out that while economies grow as a result of the provision of governance, I argue that creating an entity with a geographic monopoly simultaneously limits the...

Sovereign nations grow faster than non-sovereign ones. When Pakistan ceded economic management to the IMF in the late 1980s, the turn to neo-liberalism led to 14 years of decline in long-run rate of investment and growth from which it hasn't recovered. This cost the economy an estimated $75.6...

This Palgrave Pivot presents a series of political economy short stories of collective agency, weaving together the history of a progressive change with a discussion of the role of institutions to effect change. These stories highlight sustained activism around valuing caring, ending...

We review the literature that links institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth outcomes, focusing in particular on the empirics of the links between these. Most of this literature has an economics orientation, but we also review relevant literature from other social science and from...

Theoretical models of the Kuznets Curve have been purely analytical with little contribution towards an understanding of the timing of the process and the presence of additional mechanisms affecting its timing. This paper proposes an agent-based version of Acemoglu and Robinson's model of the...

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal institutions such as secularism (SES), whereas in less developed civilisations often rely on informal institutions such as religion (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between...