To ascertain the prevalence of soft budgets and to find causes of softness, we surveyed Mongolian enterprises, asking whether state aid was expected when financial difficulties arose. One-quarter of enterprises expected soft-budgets, a large proportion of which have central government ownership....

In this paper we bring together three different strands of literature to raise and answer the question posed in the title. The literature in the Kuznets tradition applied to services raises the question of whether the pattern observed for services, namely a rising share of GDP, is also observed...

How quickly do firms respond to new institutions? Romanian survey data permits investigation of this question, using variables summarizing firms' strategies on transactional governance. These variables are regressed on the factors that should determine efficient behavior according to standard...

The paper proposes a methodology to obtain evidence on the relative importance of different mechanisms for supporting agreements. A survey question posed to company directors summarizes key aspects of mechanisms and asks for judgments on use. In contrast to existing approaches, the data covers...

A fundamental question in economic development is how societies first acquire a successful set of institutions. To examine this question, the paper focuses on a paradigmatic example, England in the years surrounding the Glorious Revolution of 1688. North and Weingast (1989) view the...

A methodology is presented for transaction-cost measurement using reports from businesses. In Romania, transaction costs related to buying and selling are more than 20% of value added. The estimates correlate significantly with variables suggested by theory, indicating validity.

Prepared for The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition, this essay examines the evolution of both institutions and economists' thinking on institutions during transition. Early in transition, institutions were virtually ignored in the majority of normative prescriptions, but were...

We examine how Russian enterprises do business with one another, focusing on the strategies used to obtain efficiency and predictability in their transactions. Using survey data, the paper analyzes the relative importance of relational contracting, self-enforcement, enterprise networks, private...

Organized legal professions are typically viewed by economists as rent-seeking interest groups. Starting from the observation that the legal professions have been central in institutional development in countries with the highest quality institutions, we add a different perspective, developing a...

We revisit the ubiquitous claim that aiding civil society improves institutional outcomes. In our model, a vibrant civil society initiates public debate in a reform process that would otherwise be dominated by partisan interest groups and politicians. By altering the incentives of interest...