We show that the constraints on the executive were actually higher in Old Regime France than in England. The French executive had to deal with voting in provincial Etats, and the Cours des aides controlling, taxation and with provincial Parliaments registering its decisions. From a similar...

The three papers to which this comment is directed bring to vivid life the role of institutions in the economic performance of nations. The empirical examples the papers use illustrate specific institutional influences on at least two broad measures of economic performance: per capita income and...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...

We take Gary Becker's child quantity-quality trade-off hypothesis to the historical record, investigating the causal link from family size to the literacy status of offspring using data from Anglican parish registers, c. 1700-1830. Extraordinarily for historical data, the parish records enable...

The main goal of this paper is to provide an integrated overview of the literature devoted to identifying the causes of the British industrial revolution. Why did the industrial revolution, a fascinating and multifaceted event which brought about modern economic growth, occur in...

New institutional economics lacks a theory of state formation which could help us to deal with the mega question of why some states became more efficient than others at establishing and and sustaining institutions. Some kind of middle range theory could be formulated based upon historical case...

The global economic and financial crisis that commenced in 2008 has triggered massive increases in unemployed in almost all Western industrialized nations. Among the OECD nations, about half have reacted - inter alia - by introducing or expanding temporary, public sector jobs in the so-called...

This article challenges the notion that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is incompatible with neo-liberalism. It argues that CSR is not a countervailing force that follows neo-liberal market exposure. Instead of re-embedding global liberalism, CSR complements liberalization and substitutes...

How important is the enforcement of political rights in new democracies? We use the enfranchisement of the emancipated slaves following the American Civil War to study this question. Critical to our strategy, black suffrage was externally enforced by the U.S. Army in ten Southern states during...