Increased standardization was a by-product of technical innovations during the Industrial Revolution. An unfortunate side effect of standardization was enhanced opportunities for theft and embezzlement. Two significant modern institutions radically evolved during the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth...

This outstanding book presents new original contributions from some of the world's leading economists including Ronald Coase, Douglass C. North, Masahiko Aoki, Oliver E. Williamson and Harold Demsetz. It demonstrates the extent and depth of the New Institutional Economics research programme...

We treat information acquisition by potential investors in IPOs asendogenous. With endogenous information, the critical question iswhy underwriters would allow investors to spend resources acquiringsuperior information intended solely to effect a wealth transfer. Weshow that institutional...

Using property-rights tools, this paper develops a theory of the transition from despotic to rule-of-law regimes, relying on the notion that rulers and subjects are interested in maximizing wealth. Keeping subjects in check enhances despots' internal security, but at the cost of lower output,...