Africa has seen a steady rise in democracy since the end of the Cold War. This paper investigates two possible implications of democratization in African countries: better economic growth through improved institutions and less civil conflict through increased political participation....

Did individual British officers determine the institutional development of former colonies? The article presents a new research program into institutional reform and economic development based on a newly established dataset of over 14,000 biographical entries of senior colonial officers in 54...

Institutional reforms in developing countries often involve copying institutions from developed countries. Such institutional copying is likely to fail, if formal institutions alone are copied without the informal institutions on which they rest in the originating country. This paper...