This paper examines the empirical relationship between the quality of the Indian judiciary and the economic development of the Indian States and Union Territories. It evaluates this causality by analysing the development of the state-level per capita income and poverty rates. I define the...

By reinterpreting Savage axioms as axioms of the social rationality over resource allocations, we derive a social welfare function encompassing individual social values and a social attitude towards distributional inequality. Wealth maximization becomes the purpose of law only if individuals...

This paper analyzes a simple model that captures the relationship between institutional quality, the shadow economy and corruption. It shows that an improvement in institutional quality reduces the shadow economy and affects the corruption market. The exact relationship between corruption and...

The causes and consequences of corruption have attracted much attention in recent years by both academics and policy makers. Central in the discussion on the impact of corruption are perception-based indices. While informative, these indices are ordinal in nature and hence provide no indication...

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic costs of corruption. Corruption affects economic growth, the level of GDP per capita, investment activity, international trade and price stability negatively. Additionally, it biases the composition of government expenditures. The...

Abstract : Abuse and neglect of older adults (« elder abuse ») has a significant impact on the lives of the individuals involved. At the same time, it has a broader social and economic cost. Many of these are « hidden costs » in the sense that the cause of the underlying problem is not...

We present evidence on the effect of greater numbers of police personnel on crime and nuisance reduction in the Netherlands. We use a multiple time series design with police regions as the unit of analysis, covering the period 1996-2003. During this period, police resources increased...

This paper presents estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources...

In this discussion draft, linking research findings with concrete operational challenges, we review key issues in worldwide governance, and present recent empirical evidence. Focusing on defining and unbundling key governance components, such as rule of law, voice and accountability, corruption...

The widespread ennoblement of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the sixteenth century has been traditionally considered one of the main causes of Iberian decline. I document and quantify the surge in ennoblement through a new time series of nobility cases preserved in the Archive of the Royal Chancery...