This paper examines the effects of income inequality in a risk sharing model with limited commitment, that is, when insurance agreements have to be self-enforcing. In this context, numerical dynamic programming is used to examine three questions. First, I consider heterogeneity in mean income,...

The article explains the peculiarities of institutional effects on growth rates in post-communist countries. By proposing a certain dependence of the institution-growth nexus on the nature of institutional emergence, the distinction between revolutionary and evolutionary processes of institution...

Mechanisms of compensation and reward for environmental services (CRES) are becoming increasingly contemplated as means for managing human–environment interactions. Most of the functional mechanisms in the tropics have been developed within the last 15 years; many developing countries still...

The original institutionalist theory of institutional change as elaborated by Paul D. Bush (1987) in the traditions of Veblen, Ayres and J.F. Foster (called here the VAFB-paradigm), provides a most important theoretical and empirical device for critical institutional analysis, with its...

This dissertation analyzes the importance of institutions for economic performance. The first two chapters assess the importance of institutions empirically, while the last one provides a dynamic model of institutional change. Chapter 1 analyzes the robustness of institutions in growth...

We explore the implications of European integration for scal decentralization in EU member states with a dataset on 21 OECD countries over the 1975-2000 period. The dierence-in-dierence methodology is used to establish causality. EU member states are classied as the treatment and non-EU OECD...

North, with many other Samuelsonian economists, thinks of “institutions” as budget constraints in a maximization problem. But as Clifford Geertz put it, an institution such as a toll for safe passage is “rather more than a mere payment,” that is, a mere monetary constraint. “It was...

Culture of a society reflects its social values. So, through Chinese experience, we want to show that institutional change is not only an economic or a political process but fundamentally a cultural one. It is therefore based on a change in values and mentalities. Like in a chemical reaction, we...

Institutions are usually defined as rules of the game. But if rules are dead letters without being enforced, then what is the role of destructive power in the genesis of institutions? This is the first question which will be addressed in the present paper. While the importance of incremental or...

The paper is a contribution to the theory of institutional change. Using a process-based, evolutionary framework, a comparative analysis of economic and political entrepreneurship is provided and implications are derived for the role of political entrepreneurship, and the element of agency in...