This article examines envy as an important cultural link between inequality, institutions, development, and conflict. It argues that envy can be either a source of strife and stagnation or an engine for peaceful competition and growth. The fundamental conditions that activate the constructive...

This paper presents an operationalization of a mixed Bourdieu–Mincer-type model that seeks to find evidence for individual and local cultural capital effects on human capital 'ability'. We aim to compare these effects for native workers and immigrants (as well as between immigrants themselves)...

Declining general trust has become a serious social issue in China in recent years. This paper attempts to understand and analyze this social phenomenon from a social interaction perspective. Based on a repeated prisoners´ dilemma game on networks, it finds that the evolution of general trust...

Since 1950s, most African nations have gained independence from their colonial powers. Fortunately, independence has brought many changes to these nations and these include multi-party democratic government and western education systems. Unfortunately, the Africa’s economy is the least...

This article investigates the analytical line of reasoning in D. North’s, J. Wallis’ and B. Weingast’s research project “Violence and Social Orders”, which unifies in an institutional explanation scheme the control over violence in human societies, the equilibrium of interests among...

We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnic-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization...

This paper analyzes the dynamic interaction between norms - internalized restraints on opportunistic behaviour - and institutions - restraints on such behaviour deriving from external enforcement. When individuals following a norm suffer pecuniary losses to doing so, the norm is eroded....

Institutions are important for proper economic performance, but are replaceable by trust or other social norms. We show that when proper institutions and trust are missing, integrity of the individuals can replace them. We construct a model of a transactions-based economy with contracts...

We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnicity-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization...

We investigate jointly the importance of contemporary country-level institutional structures and local ethnicity-specific pre-colonial institutions in shaping comparative regional development in Africa. We utilize information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization...