This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional...

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...

The purpose of this paper is to establish a positive correlation between property rights and economic freedom. It seeks to demonstrate that property rights lead to economic freedom. From a purely theoretical perspective, it has been assumed that greater access to property rights leads to...

We use data on financially distressed Chinese companies in order to study a debt market where property rights are crudely defined and poorly enforced. To help with identification we use an event where a business-friendly province published new guidelines regarding the administration and...

What can we learn about applied price theory from the Bourgeois Era? In this paper, we contend there are three important lessons that can be extracted from McCloskey's work on the Great Enrichment. First, transaction costs are not constraints, but objects of choice. Second, property rights are...

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:...