Our purpose here is to challenge the big-bang approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency to...

Institutions - the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions - are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This paper shows that...

In der Juniausgabe 2012 veröffentlichte der Wirtschaftsdienst einen Aufsatz mit dem Titel 'Regulierung, Bildung und Wohlstand - der IW-Regulierungsindex'. Enrico Schöbel und Lars Petersen setzen sich damit kritisch auseinander und Dominik H. Enste und Jochen Wicher erläutern ihren Standpunkt...

In der Juniausgabe 2012 veröffentlichte der Wirtschaftsdienst einen Aufsatz mit dem Titel 'Regulierung, Bildung und Wohlstand - der IW-Regulierungsindex'. Enrico Schöbel und Lars Petersen setzen sich damit kritisch auseinander und Dominik H. Enste und Jochen Wicher erläutern ihren Standpunkt...

We analyze the relationship between institutional quality and firm efficiency. Using rich data on firms in the European Union between 2005 and 2012, we show that high institutional quality lowers the share of persistently inefficiently used assets. The adverse effect of low institutional quality...

This paper investigates the determinants of economic growth emphasizing the role of institutional quality, social fragmentation, and increasing global integration on recent growth experience. Our longitudinal data consists of 103 countries covering the period 1992-2005. We find that democracies...

This paper presents a survey of the literature on property rights and economic growth. It discusses different theoretical mechanisms that relate property rights to economic development. Lack of protection of property rights can result in slow economic growth through different channels:...

Recent studies show that significant historical events, particularly the slave trade, had an impact on contemporary African economies. The transmission mechanisms, however, are not well established. The purpose of the present paper is to consider two such transmission mechanisms, notably...

What can we learn about applied price theory from the Bourgeois Era? In this paper, we contend there are three important lessons that can be extracted from McCloskey's work on the Great Enrichment. First, transaction costs are not constraints, but objects of choice. Second, property rights are...