This paper presents an institution - the Community Responsibility System (CRS) - which has been a missing link in our understanding of market development. The CRS fostered market expansion throughout pre-modern Europe by providing the contract enforcement required for impersonal exchange...

This paper asks why and how institutions change. How does an institution persist in a changing environment and how do processes that it unleashes lead to its own demise? The paper shows that the game theoretic notion of self-enforcing equilibrium and the historical institutionalist focus on...

This paper presents a micro-level historical and theoretical analysis of Genoa's economic and political history during the twelfth and thirteenth century by examining the factors influencing the extent to which its political system was self-enforcing and their change over time. It combines...

This paper surveys the small, yet growing, literature that employs game theory for economic history analysis. It elaborates on the promise and challenge of integrating game theoretical and economic history analyses and presents the approaches taken in conducting such an integration. Most of the...

Existing works on the economic implications of social structures examined the effect of intra-community information and contract enforcement institutions on personal exchange among that community's members. In contrast, this paper examines the extent to which common knowledge regarding social...

This paper discusses the three approaches within economic history that utilizes micro-economic theory to examine institutions, their nature, change, and efficiency: the Neo-classical Economics approach, the New Institutional Economic History approach, and Historical Institutional Analysis...

This paper surveys the small, yet growing, literature that uses game theory for economic history analysis. It elaborates on the promise and challenge of applying game theory to economic history and presents the approaches taken in conducting such an application. Most of the essay, however, is...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- I History -- 1 The Impact of Administrative Power on Political and Economic Developments: Toward a Political Economy of Implementation -- 2 The Institutional Origins of the Industrial Revolution -- 3 Institutions and the Resource Curse in...

AbstractThis paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. Specifically, it highlights the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first highlights the limitations of the consensus...

Over the last millennium, the clan and the city have been the locus of cooperation in China and Europe respectively. This paper examines -- analytically, historically, and empirically -- the cultural, social, and institutional co-evolution that led to this bifurcation. We highlight that groups...