Taking stock of the main approaches to explaining institutional change and its relationship with economic development, this paper proposes an original formal framework to analyze institutional evolution. Institutions have formal (F) and informal (N) aspects that may evolve at different paces,...

This paper proposes a formal framework to analyze the process of institutional evolution in relation with economic progress. Institutions have both formal (F) and informal (N) aspects that may exhibit varying processes of change. N is hypothesized to evolve with the level of capital stock, as in...

In this paper, we describe the introduction of electronic commerce into the drug distribution industry in China. This case is especially interesting because massive institutional changes coincide with the introduction of a new technology. For these reasons, it becomes possible to study the...

This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a...