We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from forty-nine countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed...

Several important studies of institutions assume that the quality of institutions is persistent following some formative historic event. The assumption of institutional persistence, however, begs the question of how these institutions persisted. To better understand this issue, this paper...