This paper evaluates the importance of quot;property rights institutions,quot; which protect citizens against expropriation by the government and powerful elites, and quot;contracting institutions,quot; which enable private contracts between citizens. We exploit exogenous variation in both types...

In this paper authors argue that the main determinants of differences in prosperity across countries are differences in economic institutions. To solve the problem of development will entail reforming these institutions. Unfortunately, this is difficult because economic institutions are...

The conventional wisdom in political science is that for a democracy to be consolidated, all groups must have a chance to attain power. If they do not then they will subvert democracy and choose to fight for power. In this paper we show that this wisdom is seriously incomplete because it...

We analyze the impact of labor demand and labor market regulations on the corporate structure of firms. We find that higher wages are associated with lower monitoring, irrespective of whether these high wages are caused by labor market regulations, unions or higher labor demand. These...

The quot;Asian Crisisquot; of 1997-98 has affected almost all the quot;emerging marketsquot; open to capital flows. Measures of corporate governance, particularly the effectiveness of protection for minority shareholders, explain the extent of stock market decline better than do standard...

We construct a simple career concerns model where high-powered incentives can distort the composition of effort by inducing excessive signaling. We show that in the presence of this type of career concerns, markets typically fail to limit competitive pressures and cannot commit to the desirable...

We study the efficiency of oligopoly equilibria in congested markets. The motivating examples are the allocation of network flows in a communication network or of traffic in a transportation network. We show that increasing competition among oligopolists can reduce efficiency, measured as the...

Most economic analyses presume that there are limited differences in the prior beliefs of individuals, an assumption most often justified by the argument that sufficient common experiences and observations will eliminate disagreements. We investigate this claim using a simple model of Bayesian...

We study the efficiency of oligopoly equilibria in congested markets. The motivating examples are the allocation of network flows in a communication network or of traffic in a transportation network. We show that increasing competition among oligopolists can reduce efficiency, measured as the...