The statement "institutions matter" has become commonplace. A precondition for it to be supported by empirical evidence, is, however, that institutions are measurable. Glaeser et al. (2004) attacks many studies claiming to prove the relevance of institutions for economic development as being...

I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general...

It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behavior and impact economic development. This insight leads to the question: How do social norms evolve? This survey examines research that relies on geography to explain the development of social norms, and suggests that religion and family...

This contribution is one of the lead articles to the forthcoming Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation. It discusses the main contributions from the New Institutional Economics to transformation research but also identifies a number of research gaps