Structural explanation of political development offers a finite set of factors that cause democracy to consolidate or not (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006). This approach is, however, insufficient to explain political development of post-communist countries because it ignores a role of social...

This article explores the heterogeneous effects of liberal institutions on economic performance depending on the existence of coherent cultural traits. The matching between cultural traits and institutions is what we refer to as cultural-institutional coherence. We study the role played by...

An empirical finding by Gaspar, Jaramillo and Wingender (2016) shows that once countries cross a tax-to-GDP threshold of around 12¾ percent, real GDP per capita increases sharply and in a sustained manner over the following decade. In this paper, we attempt via four case studies - Spain, China,...

It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behavior and impact economic development. This insight leads to the question: How do social norms evolve? This survey examines research that relies on geography to explain the development of social norms, and suggests that religion and family...

Nowadays, the most typical reforms in higher education are conducted through the reorganization of universities either in the form of a merger, acquisition, or new status attainment. As a result, universities which educate local leaders for their respective national economies and have a profound...

Combining different new approaches to human behavior in neuroeconomics, the cognitive sciences and institutional economics, this paper sketches the fundamentals of a naturalistic theory of economic order. In this endeavour, the argument follows the track laid down by Hayek's comprehensive...

We present an analytical approach to institutional analysis that draws inspiration from control process engineering in the physical sciences. We characterize smart institutions as having three foundational features. First, smart institutions are context sensitive and expressly allow for a...

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is a quest to identify institutions that explain a significant portion of the observed differences in living standards across countries. Empirical work in the area focuses almost exclusively on either the global sample or on developing...

This is an entirely new draft of the sixth chapter of my book 'Foundations of Evolutionary Economics' which is going to be published by Edward Elgar in due course. With permission of the publisher, the draft chapters are posted on the web to facilitate academic discussion for further...

In this paper we collect detailed information on the budget institutions of Latin American countries. We classify these institutions on a "hierarchical"/"collegial" scale, as a function of the existence of constraints on the deficit, and voting rules. We show that "hierarchical" and transparent...