This paper analyzes the institutional conditions affecting the establishment and effectiveness of independent central banks and of budgetary institutions. It draws on the recent theory developed by North, Wallis and Weingast on the transition from a closed and fragile state to an open economic...

This paper reviews the political economy of extractive resources and the associated resources sector governance agenda. The consensus that good sector governance improves the developmental impacts of extractive resources exploitation is premised on the understanding that institutions matter for...

Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

Market democracies struggle with economic insecurity and growing inequality, presenting new threats to democracy. The revival of “political economy” offers a frame for understanding the relationship between productivity and justice in market societies. It reintegrates power and the social...

Our article presents an index of institutional complementarity for 27 postcommunist economies, and evaluates a key claim of the Varieties of Capitalism paradigm. The empirical novelty of the index lies in its integration of informal institutions as well as its combination of macro-level and...

Purpose: This paper investigates the factors responsible for the emergence of different arrangements of state-society relations. Being concerned with the relations related to the industrial sector, this study focuses more on state-business-labor relations (SBLRs), especially on power dynamics...

Pakistan has suffered from pervasive corruption since its foundation. It deals with an unstable political atmosphere and unsustainable economic development due to its fragile institutional setting. The predominance of military power that does not hesitate to overrule any government when it faces...

Despite repeated attempts to model conflict as contests over rent, few researchers have found a persuasive identification strategy to test these models. However, Lei and Michaels (2014) find that exogenous discoveries of “giant” oil fields are in fact associated with increased likelihood of...

We examine whether frontier rule, which disallows frontier residents from a recourse to formal institutions of conflict management and disproportionately empowers tribal elites, provides a more fragile basis for maintaining social order in the face of shocks. Combining a historical border...