This paper offers a theory of development which links the degree of market incompleteness to capital accumulation and … growth. At early stages of development, the presence of indivisible projects limits the degree of risk … inability to diversify idiosyncratic risks introduces high uncertainty in the growth process. The typical development pattern …

early stages of development, the range of projects and the amount of information are limited and agency costs are high … investigation of the development of financial institutions. We contrast the information aggregation role of stock markets and … information production role of banks. Because the amount of available information increases with development, our model predicts …

-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial … we document a positive cross-sectional association between national institutions and regional economic development … regional development. The positive within country effect of pre-colonial institutions also obtains in regions of partitioned …

We investigate the role of national institutions on regional development in a novel framework. We exploit the fact that … correlation between formal national institutions and economic development has to be carefully interpreted. …

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development … association between pre-colonial ethnic political centralization and regional development. This pattern is not driven by … positive association between pre-colonial political complexity and contemporary development also holds within pairs of adjacent …

We examine the link between pre-colonial statehood and contemporary regional African development, as reflected in …-country analysis reveals a strong positive correlation between pre-colonial political centralization and contemporary development (and …

shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals … a strong association between pre-colonial centralization and contemporary comparative development both across and within … countries. We also document that the strong link between pre-colonial political centralization and regional development -as …

comparative development. We also show that ethnic inequality goes in tandem with lower levels development within countries. Using …