Institutions, and more specifically private property rights, have come to be seen as a major determinant of long-run economic develop- ment. We evaluate the case for property rights as an explanatory factor of the Industrial Revolution and derive some lessons for the analysis of developing...

In this paper we combine the classical analysis of luxury consumption with the classical theories of development and growth. We also focus on the role played, within classical economics, by institutional factors such as the structure of property rights and contractual arrangements in determining...

Do patents behave substantially like property rights in tangible assets, in that they encourage development and innovation? This article notes that historical evidence, cross-country evidence, economic experiments, and estimates of net benefits all indicate that general property rights...

National averages conceal powerful interactions underlying English economic development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The simplest operational divisions are north, south and London. Initially industry and business culture predominated in the south but this culture was seduced by...