Our theory of cultural-institutional persistence and innovation is based on uncoordinated updating of individual social norms and contracts, so that both culture and institutions are endogenous. We explain why Pareto-dominated cultural-institutional configurations may persist over long periods...

Cultural and institutional differences among nations may result in differences in the ratios of marginal costs of goods in autarchy and thus be the basis of specialization and comparative advantage, as long as these differences are not eliminated by trade. We provide an evolutionary model of...

Countries characterized by strong workers’ political rights tend to exhibit a strong and concentrated corporate ownership structure. One explanation is that employees' political rights influence corporate governance: systems characterised by strong employees' rights tend to be balanced by...

This paper presents estimation of the Grossman-Helpman (1994) model for the EU. We try to address a number of pitfalls that surround the previous empirical literature. First, we suggest a new identification strategy that enables to single out politically organized sectors with specific regard to...