This paper seeks to quantify the impact of transaction costs on cross-country economic growth. Our evidence from a cross-country panel data regression analysis reveals a persistent and robust negative effect of increasing transaction costs on the path of economic growth. The growth-enhancing...

This paper examines the contribution of administrative and procedural transaction costs to economic growth under common legal system. We show that administrative and procedural costs vary quite a lot even within the institutional environment sharing the common legal system. States with...

I examine the contribution of institutional breakdowns to long-run development, drawing on Argentina's unique departure from a rich country on the eve of World War I to an underdeveloped one today. The empirical strategy is based on building a counterfactual scenario to examine the path of...

This paper seeks to quantify the functioning costs of Mexican property and contract law system for the sub-national panel of Mexican States and Mexico City and examine the respective effects of such increasing costs on sub-national paths of economic growth. Paper identifies a persistent negative...

This paper exploits the variation in the timing of electoral law enforcement across nine Latin American countries to consistently examine the contribution of de jure and de facto political institutions to long-run development. The set of novel measures of electoral law enforcement is constructed...

We examine the effect radical institutional change on long-run growth through the case of the partition of Friuli Venezia Giulia in 1947 between Italy and Yugoslavia and the subsequent integration in two distinct institutional regimes. Friuli Venezia Giulia's long-run development trajectory is...

Setting limits on government action is critical to economic development. Some forms of government organization, such as market-preserving federalism, seem effective to protect property rights in the long term with good results for economic efficiency. Spain endowed its regions with “Statutes...

Iceland experienced a significant financial meltdown and subsequent economic downturn after the 2008/2009 financial crisis struck the country. It had been the worst crisis ever experienced by a small country from the late 20th century onwards. Since 1980s, Iceland's macroeconomic stability had...