We hypothesize the failure of government to protect the rights of individuals from violence committed by youths has led to the formation of youth gangs as protective agencies. Our theory predicts an opposite direction of causality between gang activity and violent crime than is widely accepted....

The enforcement of financial and banking contracts is commonly thought to lie within the domain of government law provision. This paper analyzes a case of self-enforcing financial contracts within a banking system in nineteenth century South India. The Chettiars, a merchant-banking caste, relied...

An emphasis on public-private partnership (PPP) in the regulatory policy process can overcome the challenges hindering regulatory effectiveness with the emergence of fast developing technologies and new industries. This study attempts to evaluate quantitatively different aspects of institutional...

This paper empirically analyses the determining factors of the growth in the migration rate in the countries of the Western Balkans. The analysis is carried out with panel data over 17 years from 2005 to 2021. The purpose of this paper is to analyse social variables such as unemployment and...

Why do sudden and massive social, economic, and political changes occur when and where they do? Are there institutional preconditions that encourage such changes when present and discourage such changes when absent? I employ a general model which suggests that cascades which induce massive...

Applying total decentralization requires efficiency in itself, because the administration-citizen relationship will move closer towards that company- client relation (initiator-agent type relationship). Through decentralization the level of a state’s democracy increases, resulting in a basis...

This paper reviews some findings by Azam and Thelen (2008, 2010, 2012) that illustrate how foreign aid is used by rich countries to purchase the services of recipient governments with a view to protect or promote their economic and political interests. In particular, these findings show that...

This paper develops a new argument for the Chinese Communist Party´s success in implementing the post-Mao economic reform. We build a three-player political agency model, showing that the credibility of the threats of deposition by the selectorate and of revolts by citizens are both crucial...

Scholars and laymen assert that media attention is an important element in both an individual terrorist incident and in the ongoing struggle against terrorists. Thus far, economists' only concrete policy recommendation is that governments should maximize media coverage of negotiations in order...

I apply the Beveridge-Nelson business cycle decomposition method to the time series of murder in the United States (1900-2004). Separating out “permanent” from “cyclical” murder, I hypothesize that the cyclical part coincides with documented waves of organized crime, internal tensions,...