Using World Bank estimates of intergenerational educational persistence and mobility for multiple across the development spectrum, this paper finds that economic freedom noticeably improves educational mobility. This is probably because economic freedom increases the returns to education in ways...

What is self-governance, and under what sets of institutions is it possible? We explore this question from the perspective of informal (de facto) constitutionalism. The dominant approach, grounded in formal constitutionalism, overlooks crucial institutional features that determine whether...

While some view the informal economy as parasitic, others view it in a more positive light. We argue that the effect of the informal economy on development depends on both the size of the locale and the institutional environment. Good institutions facilitate productive activity and voluntary...

A growing literature seeks to identify the determinants of economic freedom. Within that literature, very few studies have focused on constitutional design. We study the entrenchment of constitutional provisions, i.e., the extent to which they are more difficult (costly) to change than...

This paper contributes to the literature that uses the Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) index to evaluate relationships with various outcomes. Most of the literature estimates a linear relationship between economic freedom and those outcomes. However, using matching methods can be a...

Should procedural barriers to constitutional amendment be more onerous than those to the policy changes of ordinary politics? – i.e., should constitutions be entrenched? One criterion by which to evaluate these questions is economic performance. Using data on countries worldwide and...

We use Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) data to explore whether Constitutions that follow revolutions are designed differently. We employ matching methods using 31 treatments (revolutionary Constitutions) and 162 control units (new Constitutional adoptions without a revolution). We find...

The rise of the “New History of Capitalism” as a subfield of historical studies has magnified differences between economists and historians which started to grow during the 1970s. We describe what is and what is not new about the “New History of Capitalism,” and explain how the different...

It is a little-known fact that Canada adopted its own antitrust laws one year before the landmark Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The Anti-Combines Act of 1889 was adopted after a decade in which ‘combines’ (the Canadian equivalent of ‘trusts’) grew more numerous. From their numbers,...