We explain economic growth by both politics, i.e. government activity including spending as well as regulation, and institutional quality and its interaction with politics. This extends previous work on institution building in transition by looking at its impact and, at the same time,...

Long-term beneficial welfare state reforms not only face opposition from powerful insiders and beneficiaries of the system in place. While potential losers from a policy change are often relatively easy to spot, ewll-designed reforms generate mostly diffuse gains, and the potential winners are...