The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries or regions can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries or regions. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key among those characteristics. Globalization...

This paper analyzes, both theoretically and empirically, the link between capital inflows and the quality of economic institutions. To this purpose, we construct a small-open economy model of the “soft budget constraint” syndrome wherein persistently cheap funding from abroad (i) raises the...

This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional...

This study investigates the impact of institutional quality on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows using panel data for low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high-income countries for the sample period of 1996-2016 using the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The empirical results...

This study explains the emergence of the Sicilian mafia in the XIX century as the product of the interaction between natural resource abundance and weak institutions. We advance the hypothesis that the mafia emerged after the collapse of the Bourbon Kingdom in a context characterized by a severe...

This study presents a new framework of assessing the causal effect of institutions on economic growth via exploiting the exogenous variation in institutions triggered by “peer pressure” exerted on governments by other states, affecting policy decisions and the environment national and...