Generalized morality reflects ethical norms in society about the inappropriateness of behaviors that can cause harm to others. Generalized morality may be an important factor affecting the economic performance of countries. A measure of generalized morality is constructed from data from the...

This paper is the first attempt to directly explore the long-run nonlinearity of the shadow economy. Using a dataset of 158 countries over the period from 1996 to 2015, our results reveal a robust U-shaped relationship between the shadow economy size and GDP per capita. Our results imply that...

The concepts social innovation and social entrepreneurship have gained considerable attention both in different fields of academic research and in the context of the development of economic and social policies. However, despite its wide-spread use there does not exist a unique or at least widely...

Both institutional quality and institutional stability have been argued to stimulate economic growth. But to improve institutional quality, a country must endure a period of institutional change, which implies at least a little and possibly a lot of institutional instability. We investigate the...

A large literature has found positive associations between economic freedom and income, growth, and a variety of other desirable outcomes. This paper surveys the literature that seeks to explain the causes of economic freedom. Some of the most consistent findings in this literature are that...

Economic development, which refers to the process of progressive transformation of an economy, is a multifaceted term without a universal definition. This article presents the constitutive elements of economic development, such as growth, distribution, and innovation. Economic development has...

The contention that “inclusive” institutions are the deep determinants of economic growth remains unsatisfactory. This paper develops an alternative theoretical and empirical case that economic structures are the fundamental cause of economic performance. Economic structures determine the...

Are well-functioning formal judicial institutions important for economic development, or can informal contracting arrangements provide adequate substitutes? This paper aims to answer this question using variation across industries in their reliance on contracts along with variation across Indian...

We investigate the relationship between exposure to "authoritarian" or "autocratic" institutions for prolonged periods of time and long-term economic development. Specifically, we examine how the length of time a country's regime was authoritarian between 1920 and 2000 is correlated with...