Labor and product market regulations affect the unemployment rate of a country without doubt. Econometricians, however, have yet to establish an unequivocal significance of this impact. Model mis-specification, one of the main underlying problems, is overcome by adopting a Bayesian Model...

The Asian region has experienced substantial growth over the past several decades. Indeed, a quarter of all world exports now come from East Asia. Strong infrastructure underpinnings have often been cited as a major factor contributing to this success, and an important competitive advantage over...

This volume comprises several studies and papers published in the last decades. They have been selected and ranged so that to provide a minimum of coherence concerning the phases which Romania has crossed in her way to the advanced socio-economic system of European type: transition to the market...

In this chapter, we describe the essence and role of the institutions in the modern economic systems, the main issues concerning the institutional convergence in relation to the EU integration, the institutional capital and the impact of the quality and effectiveness of the institutions on...

Reducing institutional rigidities in product and labour markets is key to lowering unemployment. The impact of such labour and product market reforms, however, depends crucially on the country-specific regulatory framework. In this paper, we estimate the country-specific impact of changes in six...

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal institutions such as secularism (SES), whereas in less developed civilisations often rely on informal institutions such as religion (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between...

There is a growing consensus among economists and policy makers that institutions matter for economic development and that institutional reforms should be a priority for developing economies. Considering the emphasis on institutional reforms, this study asks whether a catch-up in institutional...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the difference between the rates of potential entrepreneurship and actual entrepreneurship in European and American context, trying to identify some of the explanatory factors. For this purpose an institutional approach is used, which includes the role of...

We present an analytical approach to institutional analysis that draws inspiration from control process engineering in the physical sciences. We characterize smart institutions as having three foundational features. First, smart institutions are context sensitive and expressly allow for a...