While both cultural and legal norms (institutions) help foster cooperation, culture is the more primitive of the two … and itself sustains formal institutions. Cultural changes are rarer and slower than changes in legal institutions, which … makes it difficult to identify the role played by culture. Cultural changes and their effects are easier to identify in …

between culture and institutions …A growing body of empirical work measuring different types of cultural traits has shown that culture matters for a … variety of economic outcomes. This paper focuses on one specific aspect of the relevance of culture: its relationship to …

innovation in an individualist culture. This cultural effect may offset the negative effects of bad institutions on growth … effect between culture and institutions … individualism on growth through innovation. Using genetic data as instruments for culture we provide strong evidence of a causal …

culture are more likely to end up adopting democracy earlier than countries with a collectivist culture. Our empirical … analysis suggests a strong and robust association between individualistic culture and average polity scores and length of … countries with collectivist culture are also more likely to experience autocratic breakdowns and transitions from autocracy to …

We exploit differences in the mortality rates faced by European colonialists to estimate the effect of institutions on … different associated institutions. The choice of colonization strategy was, at least in part, determined by whether Europeans … likely to set up worse (extractive) institutions. These early institutions persisted to the present. We document evidence …

We revisit the debate over whether political institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and … establish the proposition that institutions cause growth are constructed to be conceptually unsuitable for that purpose. We also … variety of additional evidence, suggest that a) human capital is a more basic source of growth than are the institutions, b …

cultural heterogeneity, the world's geographical fragmentation by ethic and religious traits, at any given time. Finally, the …