Strong institutions attract talent to productive activities, whereas weak ones raise the appeal of redistribution and rent-seeking. We propose a theory that describes the impact of institutions on occupational choices over a range of abilities, and predicts that the sensitivity of such choices...

Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We...

We study the impact on visa restrictions of institutions and social norms in a sending country. To this purpose, we unbundle institutions into “institutions-services”, which complement productive activities and serve as public production inputs, and “institutions-rules”, which strengthen...

For the past several decades, financial crises have highlighted the need to assess the stability of the financial system.The current global financial crisis has demonstrated limitations in the purely statistical approaches which have heretofore been employed to assess the stability of financial...