Economic growth and poverty reduction require for a country to establish efficient rules for economic and political transactions. Poor countries suffer from inadequate, inefficient transaction rules. Formal rules (e.g., laws, policies) must be nested in hospitable behavioural norms and values....

In developing countries, particularly in those countries that have experienced declining growth rates, institutional failure (bad policies) is closely related to development failure and growth collapses. This paper addresses the issues of commitment, compromise and rent seeking, all of which are...

Political Economy and Public Choice have studied the interactions between the economy and the polity for over 60 years now. The present paper endeavours to provide a critical discussion of this literature and its achievements. In particular, it starts with the different approaches based on...

Consider an economy populated by males and females, both rich and poor. The society has to choose one of the following marriage institutions: polygyny, strict monogamy, and serial monogamy (divorce and remarriage). After having identified the conditions under which each of these equilibria...

Many empirical studies find a partial negative effect of market integration on cooperation in traditional poor small-scale farmer communities in developing countries, blaming an erosion of collective action enhancing norms (Social Capital). This paper takes the empirical analysis one step...