Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this...

"Paul J.J. Welfens has written a highly perceptive study of the origins - and the implications - of what must be Britain's worst deliberate economic policy mistake since the Great Depression." -Harold James, Princeton University, USA "This book by Paul J.J. Welfens, dealing with the result of...