This paper offers an alternative theory for the increase in unemployment and wage inequality experienced in the United … change increases skilled wages, reduces unskilled wages and increases the unemployment rate of both skilled and unskilled …

the answer may be no is that countries pursuing poor macroeconomic policies also have weak ‘institutions’, including … political institutions that do not constrain politicians and political elites, ineffective enforcement of property rights for … more ‘extractive’ institutions from their colonial past were more likely to experience high volatility and economic crises …

enabled these groups to demand, obtain and sustain changes in institutions to protect their property rights. Furthermore, the … existing institutions placed some checks on the monarchy and particularly limited its control of overseas trading activities … the result of capitalist development driven by the interaction of late medieval institutions and the economic …

notably, that evolved institutions are inherently superior to those 'designed'; that institutions must be 'appropriate' and … cannot be 'transplanted'; and that the civil code and other French institutions have adverse economic effects. …

We construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions. The model consists of landowning elites … and workers, and the key economic decision concerns the form of economic institutions regulating the transaction of labour … (e.g., competitive markets versus labour repression). The main idea is that equilibrium economic institutions are a …

. According to our preferred interpretation, these events provide evidence that, under weak institutions, popular mobilization and …

policies were chosen in Botswana because good institutions, which we refer to as institutions of private property, were in … place. Why did institutions of private property arise in Botswana, but not other African nations? We conjecture that the … following factors were important. First, Botswana possessed relatively inclusive pre-colonial institutions, placing constraints …