A country's political and economic institutions are critical for economic prosperity. The literature abounds with institutional measures, precisely because institutions are multi dimensional. We use panel-unit-root and cointegration tests to examine the time-series properties of several...

Media, Development, and Institutional Change investigates mass media’s profound ability to affect institutional change and economic development. The authors use the tools of economics to illuminate the media’s role in enabling and inhibiting political–economic reforms that promote development.

This paper analyzes trial by poison ingestion, or “sassywood,” as an institution of criminal justice in contemporary Liberia. We argue that effective criminal justice institutions must satisfy three conditions: they must be accessible to citizens, incentivize judicial administrators to...

The Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics provides an in-depth treatment of Friedrich August von Hayek’s economic thought from his technical economics of the 1920s and 1930s to his broader views on the spontaneous order of a free society. Taken together, the chapters show evidence both of...

We argue that mass media is a mechanism of institutional evolution and identify three important effects media has on institutions. The 'gradual effect' involves media contributing to marginal changes in existing institutions. The 'punctuation effect' involves media catalyzing rapid institutional...

Research examining the importance of path dependence and culture for institutions and development tells us that "history matters," but not "how" history matters. To provide this missing "how," we provide a framework for understanding institutional "stickiness" based on the regression theorem....

This paper explores the role of media in economic development. In particular, we seek to outline the conditions under which the media contributes to the successful adoption of policies aimed at economic progress. Our core thesis is that successful economic development requires the coordination...