§ Financial support from the KLAUS TSCHIRA FOUNDATION is gratefully acknowledged. Furthermore, we would like to thank participants at the 13th Annual Conference of The International Society for New Institutional Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, 2009, the participants of the Mika Widgrèn Memorial Workshop on Rules, Games and Democracy in Turku, September 7-9, 2009, as well ...

Do historical institutions have a persistent impact on economic performance? We analyze the colonial institutions set up by the British to collect land revenue in India, and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes. Areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower ag...

Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even...

Institutions are systematic patterns of shared expectations, taken-for-granted assumptions, accepted norms and routines of interaction that have robust effects on shaping the motivations and behaviour of sets of interconnected social actors. In modern societies, they are usually embodied in authoritatively coordinated organizations with formal rules and the capacity to impose coercive sanctions...

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institutions-happiness association. Our findings suggest that the conclusions reached by ...

There is widespread consensus among economists that institutions matter for economic development or stagnation. A large literature indicates that wealthy countries are those where property rights are clearly defined and protected, the rule of law is established and enforced, citizens have political and civil liberties, and policymakers adopt sound monetary and fiscal policies.1 Poor countries t...

Introduction Information and communication technology (ICT) innovation research has concerned itself with researching industrialized high-income regions of the world, with specific reference to large organizations and their innovative abilities. Emerging economies/developing countries have not been considered as a hot bed of innovation. Researchers have preferred to focus on economic and instit...

There is widespread consensus among economists that institutions matter for economic development or stagnation. A large literature indicates that wealthy countries are those where property rights are clearly defined and protected, the rule of law is established and enforced, citizens have political and civil liberties, and policymakers adopt sound monetary and fiscal policies.1 Poor countries t...