The concept of basic needs is today at the center of many discussions about development and the international order. Some international organizations are rethinking their prior evaluation of development policies based largely on aggregate economic output, in particular, the welfare of the very...

This paper describes the methods used to construct an index to measure the maritime potential of nations. This prototype uses a limited number of variables to measure (a) the locational advantage of having a long coastline in comparison to the landmass (Maritime Potential Index MPI) , (b) the...

The study investigates disparities in social development in 144 countries worldwide. In the paper we aim to investigate cross-country differences in social development level in year 2011, as well as to estimate inequalities on the field. Secondly, we assess relative social development level...

This article investigates the analytical line of reasoning in D. North’s, J. Wallis’ and B. Weingast’s research project “Violence and Social Orders”, which unifies in an institutional explanation scheme the control over violence in human societies, the equilibrium of interests among...

Taxing small deposits used to be a taboo in European politics – but why? This contribution re-assesses the protection of small deposits from an angle that has not received much attention in the current debate: the politico-philosophical, ordo-liberal, and social-political perspectives, arguing...

This paper explores the rise of the fiscal state in the early modern period and its impact on legal capacity. To measure legal capacity, we establish that witchcraft trials were more likely to take place where the central state had weak legal insti- tutions. Combining data on the geographic...

This article assumes that within the next five years or so the bulk of the Islamic world will get rid of their dictators and aims to propose a blue print of governance for the newly emerging democracies.

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

Many empirical studies are ambiguous about whether good formal institutions are conducive to subjective well-being or not. Possibly, this ambiguity is caused by cross-section models that do not account for unobserved cultural and institutional effects. Using the World Value Survey 1980-2005,...

There are two innovations in the paper as compared to the previous literature on democracy and growth. First, we consider not only the level of democracy, but also changes in this level in the 1970s-1990s as measured by increments of Freedom House political rights indices. Second, the...