Welfare economics develops the logic of how the gains of the gainers and the losses of the losers should be weighed against each other, in a specific ethical framework. Political economy develops the logic of how they will be weighed against each other, in the context of sociopolitical...

Using for the first time household survey data from 26 post-Communist countries, covering the period 1990-2005, this paper examines correlates of unprecedented increases in inequality registered by most of the economies. The analysis shows, after controlling for country fixed effects and type of...

High-quality institutions -- reflected in such factors as rule of law, bureaucratic quality, freedom from government expropriation, and freedom from government repudiation of contracts -- mitigate the adverse economic effects of ethnic fractionalization identified by Easterly and Levine (1997)...