A central requirement in the design of a legal system is the protection of law enforcers from coercion by litigants through either violence or bribes. The higher the risk of coercion, the greater the need for protection and control of law enforcers by the state. Such control, however, also makes...

We combine two experiments and a survey to measure trust and trustworthiness - two key components of social capital. Standard attitudinal survey questions about trust predict trustworthy behavior in our experiments much better than they predict trusting behavior. Trusting behavior in the...

This paper develops a model of the interaction between the supply of hatecreating stories from politicians and the willingness of voters to listen to hatred. Hatred is fostered with stories of an out-group's crimes, but the impact of these stories comes from repetition not truth. Hate-creating...

If economic growth relies upon the extent-of-the-market, then openness will decrease the connection between initial income and later growth. Alternatively, learning-by-doing models suggest that wealth will be more positively correlated with growth in open economies, because trade causes advanced...

Party platforms differ sharply from one another, especially on issues with religious content, such as abortion or gay marriage. Given the high return to attracting the median voter, why do vote-maximizing politicians take extreme positions? In this paper we find that strategic extremism depends...

We investigate the determinants of regional development using a newly constructed database of 1,569 subnational regions from 110 countries covering 74% of the world's surface and 97% of its GDP. We combine the cross-regional analysis of geographic, institutional, cultural, and human capital...

Who should enforce laws or contracts: judges or regulators? Many Coasians, though not Coase himself, advocate judicial enforcement. We show that the incentives facing judges and regulators crucially shape this choice. We then compare the regulation of financial markets in Poland and the Czech...

When world trade is costly, a country can profitably industrialize only if its domestic markets are large enough. In such a country, for increasing returns technologies to break even, sales must be high enough to cover fixed setup costs. The authors suggest two conditions conducive to...

This paper presents two propositions about corruption. First, the structure of government institutions and of the political process are very important determinants of the level of corruption. In particular, weak governments that do not control their agencies experience very high corruption...