Most social problems are "wicked", meaning that they are highly complex, intractable, open-ended, and multi-dimensional. In wicked learning environments, information is ambiguous, feedback may be slow, or causes and effects are difficult to ascertain. Using the insights from the Bloomington...

This paper examines the state and evolution of the rule of law in Mozambique, focusing on key dimensions such as voice and political participation, judicial independence and accessibility, corruption, access to basic services, personal security, and property rights. Drawing on Afrobarometer...

This paper investigates the growth impact of the EU's Structural, Cohesion and Pre-accession Funds. We look at a large sample of 27 EU countries and the UK, over a period of 1989 and 2020, essentially covering the full history of these funds. We show that the growth effect of the funds is...

Homeownership rates and holdings of housing wealth differ immensely across countries. We specify and estimate a life cycle model with risky labor income and house prices in which households face a discrete-continuous choice between renting and owning a house, whose sale is subject to transaction...

Müller (2023) presents evidence for electoral cycles in macroprudential policy in a sample of 58 countries from 2000 through 2014. Consistent with theoretical arguments, the pattern of looser regulation is larger when election outcomes are uncertain and institutions are weak. In this...

This paper investigates the growth impact of the EU's Structural, Cohesion and Pre-accession Funds. We look at a large sample of 27 EU countries and the UK, over a period of 1989 and 2020, essentially covering the full history of these funds. We show that the growth effect of the funds is...

This study examines the emergence of international hidden entrepreneurs (IHEs) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through an institutional theory lens. An international hidden entrepreneur arises when local regulations impose high costs on an international entrepreneur operating as the legal head of...

This study investigates how institutional rules and fairness in enforcement affect cooperation and compliance in heterogenous groups. In a preregistered online experiment (n = 1, 254), we vary both the existence of a rule governing contributions to a public good as well as whether enforcement of...

Codes of governance have mushroomed in contexts operating under a single, dominant institutional logic, such as publicly listed corporations. These codes act as institutional prescriptions that help spread best practices throughout industries. More recently, in some countries, specific codes...

We examine the influence of institutional framework conditions on the productivity potential of new entrepreneurial businesses in advanced and developing economies using primary data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor from 2006 to 2022. We combine each economy's institutional conditions...

Homeownership rates and holdings of housing wealth differ immensely across countries. Using micro data from five economies, we estimate a life-cycle model with illiquid housing in which households face a discrete-continuous choice between renting and owning a house. We use the model to decompose...

The Blue Economy in Africa, with its extensive aquatic and marine resources, is expected to play a major role in the continent's climate adaptation. It presents distinct opportunities to generate jobs and encourage economic growth while addressing the concerns of food security and climate...

Firms' success depends on their ability to deal with formal institutional quality. Specifically, firms exposed to a diversified set of institutional profiles can achieve institutional competitive advantage that provides firms with diverse knowledge and broader learning opportunities. While prior...

In this paper, we examine the effect of regional digital technology (including computing, communication equipment, software, and databases) on income distribution at the regional level. We aim to fill a gap in existing research by exploring the moderating role of formal and informal institutions...

This study employs the dynamic panel threshold estimation technique to examine whether the influence of financial inclusion on stability varies across countries with different levels of institutional development. This study analyzes 11,209 observations of bank-level data from 78 developed and...