We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...

Taking stock of the main approaches to explaining institutional change and its relationship with economic development, this paper proposes an original formal framework to analyze institutional evolution. Institutions have formal (F) and informal (N) aspects that may evolve at different paces,...

This paper proposes a formal framework to analyze the process of institutional evolution in relation with economic progress. Institutions have both formal (F) and informal (N) aspects that may exhibit varying processes of change. N is hypothesized to evolve with the level of capital stock, as in...

Institutional Change is an interactive process that results from the social interactions of economic actors. Several perspectives like ideology, efficiency, or distribution etc. are relevant in studying institutional change. In this paper, the distributive consideration is analyzed and an...

During the last phase of state socialism, the economic reforms attempted by these counties didn't stop the collapse of communism. Neither did the free market economic reforms in the democratic West starting around 1975 bring progress and prosperity expected. The frustrations of both these...

Increasing the realism with respect to the representation of actors, decision-making, and institutions is critical to better understand the transition towards a low-carbon sustainable society since actors, decision-making, and institutions are the defining elements of transition pathways. In...

Employing a conventional production function, this study advances theoretical and empirical research on the role of economic reforms and human capital on the post-reform economic growth. We construct two unique indexes - a composite economic reform index and a human capital index - to perform a...