The debate over whether political democracy is the least bad regime, as Churchill once said, remains unresolved because history has been ignored or misread, and because recent statistical studies have not chosen the right tests. Using too little historical information, and mistaking formal...

In this paper we analyze the optimal interplay between the publie and private enforceement of property rights. In doing so we endogenize the distinction between public and club goods on the one and private and common-pool goods on the other hand. The private enforcement of property rights is...

In this paper entrepreneurs are defined as agents who bring about economic change by combining their own effort with other factors of production in search of economic rents. The institutional setup is argued to determine both the supply and direction of entrepreneurial activity. Four key...

This paper presents a survey of the literature on property rights and economic growth. It discusses different theoretical mechanisms that relate property rights to economic development. Lack of protection of property rights can result in slow economic growth through different channels:...

Recent research has highlighted the role of institutions in channeling entrepreneurs into activities with positive or negative effects on overall productivity. Embedding central elements from these theories into a political economy framework reveals the bilateral causal relation between...

Social and cultural determinants of economic institutions and outcomes have come to the forefront of economic research. We introduce religiosity, measured as the share for which religion is important in daily life, to explain institutional quality in the form of property rights and the rule of...

High-growth firms (HGFs) are critical for net job creation and economic growth. We analyze HGFs using the theory of competence blocs, linking firm growth to property rights and the interaction of complementary expertise. Specifically, we discuss how the institutional framework affects the...

The Mexican land reform, one of the most sweeping in the world, proceeded in two steps: it granted peasants highly incomplete property rights on more than half of the Mexican territory starting in 1914, creating strong economic and political dependence for beneficiaries on the ruling political...