The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is a quest to identify institutions that explain a significant portion of the observed differences in living standards across countries. Empirical work in the area focuses almost exclusively on either the global sample or on developing...

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is the quest to identify institutions that explain significant portions of the observed differences in living standards. There are two drawbacks to the prominent approaches that focus either on the global sample, or on developing...

This dissertation analyzes the importance of institutions for economic performance. The first two chapters assess the importance of institutions empirically, while the last one provides a dynamic model of institutional change. Chapter 1 analyzes the robustness of institutions in growth...

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is the quest to identify institutions that explain significant portions of the observed differences in living standards. There are two drawbacks to the prominent approaches that focus either on the global sample, or on developing...

The key institution that determines sustained growth in R&D-based growth models is the strength of intellectual property rights, which are usually assumed to be exogenous. In this paper we endogenize the strength of the intellectual property rights and show how private incentives to protect...

All industrialized nations relied on capital account controls for significant periods of their economic development and relaxations of capital account restrictions thought to be an integral aspect of economic development. Economists long advocated the removal of capital controls as a stabilizing...

We model the two way interaction between education, corruption and the level of output. Corruption reduces income levels and hence educational attainment. Education in turn affects the incentives for corruption: more education increases output and thus the rents from corruption, but it also...