How do property rights become secure? How does rule of law take hold in an economy? I use an original survey of 516 firms in Russia and Ukraine, as well as interview-based case studies, to re-examine these fundamental issues of political economy. Most states in the developing world lack the...

The Global Sustainability Panel (GSP), formed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in August 2010, was asked to think big – to come up with a 'new development paradigm' and mechanisms for putting it into practice. Its product was, among other things, meant to help frame the forthcoming third...

This paper introduces an empirical growth model that explains the observed perplexing growth-resource regime, dubbed the resource curse. The main hypothesis introduced here, the rentier predatory state hypothesis, holds that under autocracy, the interaction between political power and resource...

While the Internet has presented unprecedented potential for the profitability of recorded music, it has also created many challenges for a reactive copyright system. Opportunistic entrepreneurs have developed lucrative distribution models that circumvent copyright protection. Moreover, these...

]The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide...

After the collapse of communism, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) implemented economic reforms that were largely inspired by the prevailing neoliberal paradigm. One of the consequences of these reforms was that the region's economies became very open to foreign direct...

Adaptable property-rights institutions, we argue, foster economic development. The British example illustrates this point. Around 1700, Parliament established a forum where rights to land and resources could be reorganized. This venue enabled landholders and communities to take advantage of...

This paper analysis the development of Slovak agriculture during the country?s economic transition and during the parallel reforms of the common agricultural policy (CAP) of the European Union from a political-economy perspective. Agricultural-policy formation in Slovakia and the EU has been...

This Paper uses a large new panel data set to examine the relationship between elections and fiscal policy. We find clear evidence of political business cycles in macroeconomic policy: spending increases before elections while revenues fall, leading to a larger deficit in election years. We also...