While both cultural and legal norms (institutions) help foster cooperation, culture is the more primitive of the two and itself sustains formal institutions. Cultural changes are rarer and slower than changes in legal institutions, which makes it difficult to identify the role played by culture. Cultural changes and their effects are easier to identify in simpler, more controlled, environments,...

This paper discusses the question of whether institutions matter for regional development and, if so, of how can the institutional dimension be integrated in regional development strategies. It finds that while the role of local institutions is crucial for economic development and as a means of determining the returns of regional development policies, generating an institution-based general reg...

Formal and informal institutions, such as laws and social norms, are pervasive in daily life. They help maintain cooperation by coordinating and constraining individuals’ behaviors. However, our understanding of the comparative benefits and the endogenous emergence of institutions remains limited. Here, we study the emergence and performance of sanctioning institutions in a public goods context...

In United States v. Loughner the Ninth Circuit will soon address the constitutionality of involuntarily medicating an incompetent pretrial defendant through a Harper order that could serve to render him competent to stand trial without the added procedural protection of a judicial hearing. Judicial support for applying Harper orders to pretrial defendants is likely to be used to justify Harper ...

A major theme within the literature on rural development is that the particular mix of formal and informal institutions present in any situation is a key determinant of development outcomes. However, there is some evidence that in policy and practice there are considerable difficulties in articulating formal organizational realities with the rules and norms embedded in informally constructed so...

A major theme within the literature on rural development is that the particular mix of formal and informal institutions present in any situation is a key determinant of development outcomes. However, there is some evidence that in policy and practice there are considerable difficulties in articulating formal organizational realities with the rules and norms embedded in informally constructed so...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have been shown to derive from external and internal motivations of a company. Little attention has given managers in large farms agroholdings undertake CSR thanks individual values pressure institutions. We therefore investigate the types conducted by 18 Argentina. underline their perception issues do activities. The framework developed this pap...