In the one-shot trust or investment game without opportunities for reputation formation or contracting, economic theory predicts no trusting because there is no incentive for trustworthiness. Under these conditions, theory predicts (a) no effect of pre-play communication, and (b) universal...

We study the evolution of employment and wage outcomes in Chinese SOEs during the first decade of economic reforms, using a panel of data for almost 1000 enterprises covering the years 1980-90. Unlike the 1990s, which were marked by growing labor redundancy in the SOE sector, we find that...

In this paper, an index of the depth of experience with state-level institutions, or state antiquity, is derived for a large set of countries. We show that state antiquity is significantly correlated with measures of political stability and institutional quality, with income per capita, and with...