This paper considers the problem of why societies develop differently, a question most recently articulated by Acemoglu and Robinson (2012). We follow North (1990) in defining institutions as the "rules of the game in society." The question then becomes why do different societies develop...

Social trust is a crucial ingredient for successful collective action. What causes social trust to develop, however, remains poorly understood. The quality of political institutions has been proposed as a candidate driver and has been shown to correlate with social trust. We show that this...

The Cold War division of Korea, regarded as a natural experiment in institutional change, provides a unique opportunity to examine whether institutions affect social preferences. We recruited North Korean refugees and South Korean students to conduct laboratory experiments eliciting social...

The Cold War division of Korea, regarded as a natural experiment in institutional change, provides a unique opportunity to examine whether institutions affect social preferences. We recruited North Korean refugees and South Korean students to conduct laboratory experiments eliciting social...

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural envi-ronment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...