We analyze the effect of the inherited Mexican property institutions in California on the state’s early agricultural development, focusing on land demarcation and the implied water rights. In California large tracts of land, called ranchos, granted during Spanish and Mexican rule of California...

This article explores the heterogeneous effects of liberal institutions on economic performance depending on the existence of coherent cultural traits. The matching between cultural traits and institutions is what we refer to as cultural-institutional coherence. We study the role played by...

This article examines the relationship between the work of Yoram Barzel and the New Institutional Economics. Barzel has developed a property rights/transaction cost approach to economics and has written on topics ranging from car racing to slavery to Jewish lending to voting rules in condominium...