Institutions - the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions - are widely assigned a central role … in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive … because they are economically efficient. This paper shows that alternative explanations of institutions - particularly those …

Guilds are social scientists' favoured historical example of institutions generating a "social capital" of trust that … even to strangers. This is paralleled by the distinction between a "differential" trust in institutions that enforce the … rights of certain groups and a "uniform" trust in impartial institutions that enforce the rights of all. Guilds had the …

gave way to (changing) democratic institutions. Political pay was introduced for magistrates, jurors, and assemblymen … institutions on the presence and nature of economic transactions is obvious. The influence on institutional change from changes in …

quality. Drawing on the trust and corruption literature, several hypotheses about the effect of country size on trust are … having historically weaker representative institutions. However, controlling for political representation, country size has a …