Democratic governments can be either national or federal in form. Whether the form of democracy matters, how it matters if, indeed, it does matter, and for whom it might matter are the types of questions this paper explores. Federalism is generally described as a pro-liberty form of government....

Murray Rothbard and other anarcho-capitalists would abolish all governments. Individuals instead would voluntarily subscribe to the services of one of a number of competing private protective associations. This vision is a pipe dream. Building on the ideas of small-government classical liberals...

The globalisation of the economy goes along with numerous kinds of uncertainty and requires adequate institutional designs in order to avoid disadvantageous situations from the actors' points of view. Institutional designs usually consist of a mix of different institutions that are adapted to...

The essay is based on the knowledge that institutional quality may influence economic performance. From this viewpoint, it is possible to demonstrate that under certain circumstances, governmental policy is able to increase economic efficiency and performance by creating, maintaining, and...

The design of fully funded pension plans is affected by governance and incentive problems, as underlined by the experience of several countries. The analytic perspective of contract theory allows to detect the nature of such problems: pension-fund managers have strong incentives to manipulate...

While the visible structures of cities may be designed, the invisible structures of how land, buildings, enterprises and money are owned and controlled are accepted as a given. This paper argues that to sustain humanity on the planet, the invisible structures of society need to follow the...

For the past century economists have proposed a suite of theories relating to industrial dynamics, technological change and innovation. There has been an implication in these models that the institutional environment is stable. However, a new class of institutional technologies — most notably...

Governments struggle to allocate funds towards ever-changing priorities, especially when spending increases are limited by austerity. Times of recession might be especially poor moments for reallocations of funds, as budget holders try to protect what they have. This pattern has not been...

We discuss a government's incentives to delegate regulation to bureaucrats. The government faces a trade-off in its delegation decision: bureaucrats have knowledge of the firms in the industry that the government does not have, but at the same time, they have other preferences than the...