User rights in fisheries refer to the rights of fishers to harvest from fish resources. In terms of exclusivity, security, duration and transferability these rights can be strong or they can be weak. For this a definition of and a measure of the strength of user rights is needed. We refer to...

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. The evaluation of the causal effects of property rights, however, is a difficult task as their allocation is typically endogenous. To overcome this identification problem, we exploit a natural experiment in the...

Recent research has highlighted the role of institutions in channeling entrepreneurs into activities with positive or negative effects on overall productivity. Embedding central elements from these theories into a political economy framework reveals the bilateral causal relation between...

We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of the shadow economy on entrepreneurial entry, utilising 1998-2005 individual-level Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data merged with macro level variables. A simple correlation coefficient suggests a positive linear link between the size of...

Two important lessons of all socialist experiments to date are: socialism has repeatedly failed to duplicate the accomplishments of capitalism, and socialism refuses to die. At the turn of 21st century, a new type of socialism, liberal socialism, is growing in Europe. Analysis shows that a major...

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. The evaluation of the causal effects of property rights, however, is a difficult task as their allocation is typically endogenous. To overcome this identification problem, we exploit a natural experiment in the...