"What role does the business environment play in promoting and restraining firm growth? Recent literature points to a number of factors as obstacles to growth. Inefficient functioning of financial markets, inadequate security and enforcement of property rights, poor provision of infrastructure,...

"Using cross-country data, the authors evaluate historical determinants of protection of property rights. They examine four historical theories that focus on conceptually distinct causal variables believed to shape institutions: legal origin, endowments, ethnic diversity, and religion. There is...

"The authors examine how well several institutional and firm-level factors and their interactions explain firms' perceptions of property rights protection. Their sample includes private and public firms that vary in size from very small to large in 62 countries. Together, the institutional...