A common argument in the trust literature is that high-trust cultures allow efficient commercial contracts to be shorter, covering fewer contingencies. We take this idea to the topic of social contracts. Specifically, we ask whether social trust affects the length and detail of constitutions....

It is claimed here that the epistemics of constitutional economics has hitherto at best played a minor role but that dwelling on the epistemics might prove useful to understand why the positive branch of constitutional economics is not as far advanced as its normative counterpart. Four possible...

We provide experimental evidence on the emergence of redistributive societies. Individuals first vote on redistribution by feet and then learn their productivity and invest. We vary the individuals’ information about their productivities at the time when they choose a distribution rule and...

Over 10 years ago, Feld and Voigt (2003) introduced the first indicator for objectively meas-uring the actual independence of the judiciary and demonstrated its utility in a large cross-section of countries. The indicator has been widely used, but also criticized. This paper pre-sents more...

This study contains further evidence on the economic effects of direct democratic institutions. A first study found that countries with national initiatives have higher government expenditure and are characterized by more rent-seeking activity, that the effects of direct democratic institutions...