What threatens the property rights of business owners? And what makes these rights secure? This book transcends the conventional diagnosis of the issue in modern developing countries by moving beyond expropriation by the state ruler or by petty bureaucratic corruption. It identifies 'agent...

This paper reiterates the classical liberal critique of socialism in the format of alternative history. The history described here is identical to ‘ours’ up until just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. From then on, it deviates. In this alternative version, German reunification never...

Moscow has stumbled against a wall of Ukrainian resolve. As Ukrainians recapture territory, the horrors of Russian occupation become clear. It should not surprise. Ukrainians fierce determination against Putin’s Russification comes from first-hand understanding of what it means to be ruled by...

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the North Caucasus is known as a politically unstable region and as a melting pot for terrorism and all kinds of criminal activity, reaching from drugtrafficking and illegal arms trade to hijacking and extortion. Furthermore, the North Caucasus is one of...

The paper emphasizes the transition in Russia and the role institutions played before and during the process. In Russia, a big bang approach was applied. That is to say, transition was conducted all of a sudden, omitting important underlying reforms. This practice should function as a shock...

Im folgenden Artikel wird der verbreiteten These widersprochen, eine Europaeisierung von Arbeitnehmervertretung scheitere zuvorderst an nationalkulturellen Divergenzen. Statt wissenschaftlich aufgefundene Deutungsmuster europaeischer Akteure analytisch v.a. auf je nationale Kulturen...

The economics of the Croatian war differ considerably from what is often thought of as typical features of a war economy. Most strikingly, while wars are often perceived as generating a tendency towards repressed inflation and a command economy the Croatian economy actually moved in the opposite...

Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers within Socialist East Germany during the 1980s and accounting for potential endogeneity,...

Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers within Socialist East Germany during the 1980s and accounting for potential endogeneity,...

The standard view of Soviet industrialization is that it aimed at accelerating economic growth by giving preference to heavy industry, a strategy credited to Preobrazhenskii and Feldman. This view ignores massive evidence on the objectives of industrialization and implies irrational behavior by...