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Whatever is, is right?: Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe (Tawney lecture 2006)
Ogilvie, Sheilagh - 2007
Institutions - the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions - are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This paper shows that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010264182
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The Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from the French Revolution
Finley, Theresa; Franck, Raphaël; Johnson, Noel D. - 2020
This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012314909
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Legal institutions, innovation and growth
Anderlini, Luca; Felli, Leonardo; Immordino, Giovanni; … - 2011
change is needed. The rigid system is preferable at early stages of technological development, when (lack of) commitment …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010274865
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The Diffusion of New Institutions: Evidence from Renaissance Venice's Patent System
Comino, Stefano; Galasso, Alberto; Graziano, Clara - 2017
that are more effective at preventing outsider’s entry and at mitigating price competition lead to less patenting. We test … restrict entry and price competition. We show that guilds which originated from medieval religious confraternities were more … likely to regulate entry and competition, and that the effect on patenting is robust to instrumenting guild statutes with …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011744918
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Nation Building: The Role of Central Spending in Education
Cinnirella, Francesco; Schueler, Ruth Maria - 2016
It is generally argued that, in the context of Imperial Germany, public primary education was used to form “loyal citizens” and to build a nation. In this paper we analyze to what extent central spending on primary education affected participation at general elections and votes for...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011555545
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Interest groups and government spending in Italy, 1876 - 1913
Fiorino, Nadia; Ricciuti, Roberto - 2009
was affected by the action of some interest groups that pursued both state protection from competition and specific public …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010273796
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What lessons for economic development can we draw from the Champagne fairs?
Edwards, Jeremy; Ogilvie, Sheilagh - 2011
The medieval Champagne fairs are widely used to draw lessons about the institutional basis for long-distance impersonal exchange. This paper re-examines the causes of the outstanding success of the Champagne fairs in mediating international trade, the timing and causes of the fairs' decline, and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010274973
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Institutional Transplant and Cultural Proximity: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Prussia
Lecce, Giampaolo; Ogliari, Laura - 2015
The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural envi-ronment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011431190
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Persistent States: Lessons for Scottish Devolution and Independence
Muscatelli, Anton; Roy, Graeme; Trew, Alex - 2022
The equilibrium size of a nation state is, in part, the result of a trade-off between the gains from scale economies in the provision of public services and the costs of applying uniform policy to heterogeneous cultural, institutional, and geographical fundamentals. Changes in such fundamentals...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013177544
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Did Caselaw Foster England's Economic Development during the Industrial Revolution? Data and Evidence
Grajzl, Peter; Murrell, Peter - 2022
We generate and analyze data pertinent to the role of caselaw in England's economic development during the Industrial Revolution. Applying topic modeling to a corpus of 67,455 reports on English court cases, we construct annual time series of caselaw developments between 1765 and 1865. We then...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013470346