There is a consensus among scholars that institutions (i.e. norms and regulations) are country specific. The paper aims to contribute to the debate by examining the type of institutions which have been the most important for growth in transition countries. It employs a new set of the...

The literature on the growth effects of European integration remains inconclusive. This is due to severe methodological difficulties mostly driven by country heterogeneity. This paper addresses these concerns using the synthetic control method. It constructs counterfactuals for countries that...

We revisit the debate over whether political institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and human capital accumulation lead to institutional improvement. We find that most indicators of institutional quality used to establish the proposition that institutions cause...