This book argues that the capacity of a country to develop, and the levels of economic and social development achieved, depend more on the institutional parameters within which the development policies are implemented than on the policies themselves. It contends that forces of globalisation...

States' fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural resources rents may reduce incentives to invest in...

This study explains the emergence of the Sicilian mafia in the XIX century as the product of the interaction between natural resource abundance and weak institutions. We advance the hypothesis that the mafia emerged after the collapse of the Bourbon Kingdom in a context characterized by a severe...