The present difficulties of democratic welfare states in Europe are often ascribed to economic "globalization", that is to the world-wide integration of markets for capital, goods and services which has eliminated national control over boundary-crossing economic transactions, and which therefore...

With twelve new members the decision making in the European Union via intergovernmental cooperation will become ineffective. In order to avoid a Stagno-Europe the EU has a choice: Either it looks for the very essentials in the common institutional frame or the member states agree in ceding...

The paper explores possible frontiers of historical-institutionalist analysis. It argues three points: that progress will require a return from a static to a dynamic perspective in which change is no longer a special case but a universal condition of any social order; that theory must not a...

Four types of economics" relevant for institutional analysis are distinguished: Standard Neoclassical Economics; Socio-Economics or Social Economics; New Institutional Economics; and Psychological Economics (often misleadingly called Behavioural Economics). The paper argues that an extension of...

It has been argued in the literature that, interjurisdictional competition forces the public sector to increase its efficiency and thus helps to tame Leviathan governments. The paper addresses this hypothesis by means of a simple taxcompetition model with a Leviathan state. It is seen that the...

The paper discusses how the Russian labor market has been evolving over two decades of the transition. It starts with tracing key labor market indicators such as employment, unemployment, labor force participation, working hours, and real wages. Their dynamics indicate that the labor market...

Economic growth and poverty reduction require for a country to establish efficient rules for economic and political transactions. Poor countries suffer from inadequate, inefficient transaction rules. Formal rules (e.g., laws, policies) must be nested in hospitable behavioural norms and values....

In developing countries, particularly in those countries that have experienced declining growth rates, institutional failure (bad policies) is closely related to development failure and growth collapses. This paper addresses the issues of commitment, compromise and rent seeking, all of which are...

Political Economy and Public Choice have studied the interactions between the economy and the polity for over 60 years now. The present paper endeavours to provide a critical discussion of this literature and its achievements. In particular, it starts with the different approaches based on...