This paper investigates the association between corruption and political power, using individual level data on political corruption cases tried in France during the period 1980-2006. We test the hypothesis that corruption conviction and severity of punishment are negatively associated with...

The political conflict that exists between the judiciary and the politicians about their independence and respective responsibilities is a subject of debate not only among jurists but also among economists. The judges want to be independent of the politicians and the politicians want to that the...

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the conventional theory of moral hazard and adverse selection. Moral hazard and adverse selection problems in contemporary economic theory are plagued with four major flaws: 1) the alleged asymmetrical information between buyer and seller as a problem in...

Much of the literature on corporate performance focuses on institutional restructuring, and implicitly assumes that constitutional factors are determined exogenously. Existing theories of the firm—whether a “goal paradigm” or an “exchange paradigm”—provide useful insights; but we...

The literature shows a clear correlation between sound constitutional environments and human flourishing. However, the path to adoption of sound constitutions is much less clear. This paper turns to the history of constitutional transfer to propose an alternative to taxonomies offered in the...

Much of the literature on corporate performance focuses on institutional restructuring, and implicitly assumes that constitutional factors are determined exogenously. This misses the extent to which companies can and do build unique and meaningful constitutional orders. Based on an assumption...