Setting limits on government action is critical to economic development. Some forms of government organization, such as market-preserving federalism, seem effective to protect property rights in the long term with good results for economic efficiency. Spain endowed its regions with “Statutes...

This paper studies for the first time the impact on various measures of economic efficiency of regulatory complexity by sector in Spain. We base our analysis on an innovative database that classifies 206,777 regulations by economic sector and region, which highlights the growing volume of...

We examine the effect of political factionalism in the presence of weak state capacity on long-term economic growth. To this end, we exploit the 1958 civil uprising between Maronite Christian and Sunni Muslim factions in Lebanon to estimate the impact of factious tensions on long-term growth. To...

We examine the effect radical institutional change on long-run growth through the case of the partition of Friuli Venezia Giulia in 1947 between Italy and Yugoslavia and the subsequent integration in two distinct institutional regimes. Friuli Venezia Giulia's long-run development trajectory is...

We examine the impact of the trans fat ban on a variety of public health outcomes. To this end, we consider a de facto trans fat ban that was introduced by Denmark in 2001. Using the synthetic control method, parallel trends between Denmark and countries in a control group in the years prior to...

This article examines the importance of institutional shocks for long-run development with an application to the Iranian revolution. Our empirical method offers a clear test to distinguish between three models of institutional change. We define gradual institutional change without a major shock,...