Political scientists and economists increasingly agree that institutions may influence economic growth, but there is little general agreement on what institutions tend to produce what consequences. We apply public choice insights for a theoretical analysis that may be termed “Madisonian”:...

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, patentees created many novel and complex transactions to commercialize their property: they maximized their profits through sophisticated agreements that imposed restrictions on manufacturing, sales, and other uses of their inventions. When these...

The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the process of introduction and establishment of the “new and old” institution of property rights in land in Ukraine. This paper consists of a historical overview of property rights in agricultural land. The review starts when Ukraine was a...

In his pioneering work on transaction costs, Ronald Coase presupposed a picture of property as a bundle of government-prescribed use rights. This picture is not only not essential to what Coase was trying to do, but its limitations emerge when we apply Coase’s central insights to analyze the...

This paper presents a model on the viability and persistence of open and closed-source productions in the software industry. Starting from some empirical evidence on the degree of organizational diversity that characterizes this sector of the economy, the paper asks one main question: why do...

What political institutions improve property rights? Building on the work of North and Weingast (1989), this paper argues that institutional checks on policymaking discretion ("veto players") improve the property rights of investors regarding the value of the domestic currency. Veto players...

Public hospitals are a central feature of public health care systems. Providing specialized care for many severe conditions, they are at the centre of attention of citizens as well as politicians, and they represent the bulk of health care expenditure. The efficiency of public production of...

Throughout western Europe, beginning about 1200, leasing of lords' estates became more common relative to direct management. In England, however, direct management increased beginning around the same time and until the fourteenth century, and leasing increased thereafter. This article models...