This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a...

A stock exchange and the presence of functioning equity markets are part and parcel of an advanced market-based financial system. Previous research has also established that equity markets function more efficiently in the presence of supporting institutions such as property rights and rule of...

This paper develops the empirical and theoretical case that differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development. We first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two “quasi-natural experiments” in history, the...

This chapter surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in...

There is a broad agreement that political and economic institutions matter for long-term development. Yet relatively little is known as to how to adopt good quality institutions and reform weak or poor institutions, for which one needs to know how institutions change. This paper provides a...