This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

Why has the expansion of women's economic and political rights coincided with economic development? This paper investigates this question, focusing on a key economic right for women: property rights. The basic hypothesis is that the process of development (i.e., capital accumulation and...

We study the effect of the fragmentation of intellectual property rights on optimal patent design. The major finding is that when several complementary innovative components must be assembled to operate a new technology, the patentability requirements should be stronger than in the case of...

Over a quarter of the world's population lives in economies that have undertaken transitions from central planning to market economies. These transitions entail far-reaching and complex changes in social, economic and political institutions and have had widely divergent outcomes. Important...

We develop an endogenous growth model to study the long run consequences of offshoring with firm heterogeneity and incomplete contracts. In so doing, we model offshoring as the geographical fragmentation of a firm's production chain between a home upstream division and a foreign downstream one....

This paper describes private actors involvement in Colombia s policymaking process. While more transparent and formal channels are used to discuss horizontal policies, they are also less effective. The adoption of targeted policies, however, follows a faster track and depends more on political...