Research examining the importance of path dependence and culture for institutions and development tells us 'history matters', but not how history matters. To provide this missing 'how', we provide a framework for understanding institutional 'stickiness' based on the Regression Theorem. The...

With the collapse of communism in the late 1980s the field of comparative political economy has undergone major revision. Socialism is no longer considered the viable alternative to capitalism it once was. We now recognize that the choice is between alternative institutional arrangements of...

While both errors of overoptimism and errors of overpessimism are possible in the face of imperfect information, the presence of option value from deferring a decision to exchange causes trader errors to be overpessimistically biased. This is problematic because unlike errors of overoptimism,...

This paper investigates the political economy of FEMA after its post-9/11 merger with the Department of Homeland Security. Using panel data for the post-DHS merger but pre-Katrina period, we examine how FEMA's much-debated reorganization has impacted the strong political influences on disaster...

Existing research establishes a strong association between patterns of media ownership and economic development on the one hand, and the importance of media-provided information in holding politicians accountable on the other. However, a 'black box' remains surrounding the precise nature of the...

In this paper, we examine the resiliency of community recovery after a natural disaster. We argue that a resilient recovery requires robust economic/financial institutions, political/legal institutions, and social/cultural institutions. We explore how politically and privately created disaster...

This paper investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation, minimize crew conflict, and maximize...

This paper investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation, minimize crew conflict, and maximize...

The international labor rights movement, led by the International Labour Organization (ILO), argues that developing countries are currently ready for more stringent labor standards. This paper investigates this claim by examining the timing of labor standard adoption in highly developed...

In standard microeconomic theory, perfect price discrimination is socially efficient. However, this theory neglects that enacting price discrimination is costly to firms. We prove that when this costliness is accounted for, perfect price discrimination is often socially inefficient. Under linear...