Using a survey of private firms in Vietnam, we examine how ongoing relationships serve information-provision and contract-enforcement purposes, substituting for absent market infrastructure. We find that ongoing relationships work when firms face high costs in finding alternative trading...

People's concern for their own reputation can support contracting between a pair of trading partners when one or both are locked in, and among multiple trading partners in close-knit communities where information flows freely. In communities where people can hide behind their anonymity, private...

Which of the democratic checks and balances - opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press - is the most forceful? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using...

Analyzing a variety of cross-national and sub-national data, we argue that high adult mortality reduces economic growth by shortening time horizons. Higher adult mortality is associated with increased levels of risky behavior, higher fertility, and lower investment in physical and human capital....