The East Asian miracle was real. Prior to the 1997 economic and currency crises, Asian NICs - Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan - achieved remarkable annual GDP growth. In these countries the overall economic performance was significantly determined by the industrial development triggered...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians' preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...

This lecture addresses three related aspects of monetary and fiscal management in Europe and elsewhere. First, I discuss the implications of economic integration for monetary and fiscal policy, especially the narrow focus on low inflation as the main objective of monetary policy. I argue that...

This paper focuses on the role of "institutions" in the fight against poverty and inequality. Our view of institutions encompasses formal rules designed by polity (including those in the legal and economics sphere such as rules of property rights, contracts and liabilities) as well as informal...

There is much disagreement about both the facts and the explanations of income inequality. Even if we confine attention to OECD countries, we find people arguing that there has been a great U-turn, with inequality rising sharply after its post war fall, and others who believe that the speed of...