How do we account for the difficulties that former socialist countries experienced in the beginning of transition? Why is it that some countries performed relatively better (the Baltic and Central European countries) than others (Bulgaria and Romania)? Why in the second half of 1990s, and...

Traditional monetary and economic convergence in accordance with the Optimal Currency Areas model has a number of limitations. Above all, it fails to assess the state of formal and informal monetary institutions. Adequate for an industrial society, it does not address the change to a globalising...

In this paper we study the relationship between legislature size with respect to general government and welfare spending. According to the theory, legislature size has an indefinite effect on government spending because logrolling and transaction costs have canceling effects. Bicameralism is...

De facto judicial Independence (JI) seems to be highly and robustly significant for economic growth. But JI as formally written down in legal texts is a imperfect predictor for de facto JI. This paper thus tries to identify the variables, which determine de facto JI.. A distinction between...

Judicial independence is not only a necessary condition for the impartiality of judges, it can also endanger it: judges that are independent could have incentives to remain uninformed, become lazy or even corrupt. It is therefore often argued that judicial independence and judicial...

This paper introduces a number of indicators on various aspects of competition laws and competition agencies in order to make competition policies comparable. It contains an indicator concerned with the objectives and the instruments of competition laws, a second indicator evaluating to what...

Criminal investigation and prosecution of politicians, top civil servants and other public figures are topics frequently discussed in the media. The nature of the investigating or prosecuting authority varies between countries – from the general public prosecutor, through magistrates to...

We argue that a higher degree of de facto independence of the legal system from the other government branches as well as public trust in the legal system may reduce the average inflation record of countries through a direct and an indirect channel. The direct channel works by affecting potential...