This paper shows that the attainment and sustenance of full employment in a modern economy is dependent on the quality of political leaders, their choice of discount rate and the institutional restrictions that place a limit on predation of public resources or it conversion to private use. In...

This paper presents a framework for understanding the interactions between political and legal institutions, property rights protection, and their implications for financial development. Whereas the literature has answered questions on why some countries lag behind in terms of financial and...

Recent studies have analysed the economic benefits of belonging to high-trust networks and the biological foundations of individual trust, but much scepticism remains regarding the precise role of trust in economic transactions, as well as gaps between micro and macro concepts of trust. This...

Our article presents an index of institutional complementarity for 27 postcommunist economies, and evaluates a key claim of the Varieties of Capitalism paradigm. The empirical novelty of the index lies in its integration of informal institutions as well as its combination of macro-level and...

The paper focuses on the non-linearity of the transmission of the impact of globalization on poverty and the existence of threshold effects. Institutions constitute a critical factor for the creation of threshold effects in the impact of globalization on poverty. Institutions - their...

Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive...