We document that trust in public institutions—and particularly trust in banks, business and government—has declined over recent years. U.S. time series evidence suggests that this partly reflects the pro-cyclical nature of trust in institutions. Cross-country comparisons reveal a clear...

This paper presents new institutional measures for Zambia. Coverage is of political rights and freedoms, of property rights, and of political instability. The sample period is from 1947 to 2007. Comparison of the indices with directly comparable Zimbabwean and Malawian series, shows strong...

Administrative barriers considerably hinder establishment of new and operation of the existing small and medium enterprises. These barriers should be understood as costs incurred by the entrepreneurs due to fulfilment of information obligations which result from legal regulations imposed by the...

I build a model where potentially biased judges verify complex states by interpreting an imperfect signal whose noise captures factual ambiguities. In a sales and a financial transaction I show that judicial biases amplify and distort factual ambiguities, creating enforcement risk. To insure...

We analyze the possible impact of re-organizing multiple prosecutors' offices on 'prosecutorial output': merging multiple districts saves on a state's expenditures but the impact on the criminal justice is ambiguous and depends on whether scale efficiencies make up for the diminished resources...

The Subprime Crash that started capitalism’s latest crisis was mainly a proxy for an inexistent housing policy which would benefit many impoverished middle class families. Housing being clearly recognized as a human right, the behaviour of markets and its critical consequences could lead us to...

We exploit the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006 to evaluate the indirect effects of a policy that randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. We estimate the direct and indirect impact of the...

In recent decades, women’s participation in the labor market has increased considerably in most countries and is converging toward the participation rate of men. Though on a lesser scale, a similar movement toward gender convergence seems to be occurring in the criminal world, though many...

At a time in which behavioural science has gained increasing attention for the design of population-wide health interventions, this chapter discusses its potential contributions to the prevention and control of Non-Communicable-Diseases (NCDs). Given the largely preventable nature of NCDs, any...

This paper outlines the foundations of corporate governance.  The discussion includes a review on the modern corporation, transaction costs theory, agency costs theory, legal investor protection, investor protection by corporate governance and its various mechanisms, as well as an overview of...