The world is experiencing its worst recession in 80 years. What started as US sub-prime financial turmoil has developed into the first global recession since the infamous 'Great Depression' of the early 1930s. However gloomy the perspectives for the very short term are, there will be a recovery...

This paper summarizes the main findings of the literature on the relationship between financial and economic development (the known knowns), points to directions for future research (the known unknowns), and then speculates on the third Rumsfeldian category. The known knowns section organizes...

This essay argues that economic systems should be defined in terms of clusters of complementary institutions. To show how such an approach can be carried out, I use a cluster analysis technique and data on forty different economic institutions in OECD nations to isolate four quite different...

The relationship between government size and growth has received an enormous attention in the economics literature, and the recent financial crisis has forced this topic back on the agenda. A highly controversial debate in this respect is whether large governments are harmful for growth....

Based on the variable rate of gross domestic product per capita growth and its sources, this paper first identifies five phases of economic development that are common to China, Japan, and Korea: M (Malthusian), G (government-led), K (à la Kuznets), H (human capital based) and PD (post...

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which...