’ persistent characteristics, such as their institutions. Among our findings are that macroeconomic policies affect development …

Following the collapse of planning, new small and medium-sized firms rapidly emerged in all transition economies. Using … formerly planned economies with those in economies outside transition, we document not only the challenges faced by transition …

of institutions. Yet via unification, East Germany had immediate access to credible, high quality institutions. This … paper argues that success in a capitalist economy depends not only on high quality institutions but also on finding one …

the direction of potential causality between financial and economic development. Our results conclude to the existence of … a single cointegrating vector between financial development and growth and of causality going from financial development … to economic growth. We find little evidence of reverse causation as well as bi-directional causality. We interpret this …

political science, sociology, psychology, law and anthropology) is fruitful to explain institutions because it allows us to …

entrepreneurial elite, resulting in economic policy and institutions which are more conducive to entrepreneurship and productivity … evidence on transition economies. …

Institutions are important for proper economic performance, but are replaceable by trust or other social norms. We show … that when proper institutions and trust are missing, integrity of the individuals can replace them. We construct a model of … a transactions-based economy with contracts preceding the transactions, and show that any one of (1) institutions, (2 …