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The economic institutions of artificial intelligence Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Sinclair Davidson
This paper explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) within economic institutions, focusing on bounded rationality as understood by Herbert Simon. Artificial Intelligence can do many things in the economy, such as increasing productivity, enhancing innovation, creating new sectors and jobs, and improving living standards. One of the ways that AI can disrupt the economy is by reducing the problem
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Hayek's extended mind: on the (im)possibility of Austrian behavioural economics Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Erwin Dekker, Blaž Remic
Recent work has argued for a Hayekian behavioural economics, which combines Austrian economics with behavioural economics as developed by Kahneman, Thaler, Sunstein, and others. We suggest that this hybrid is misguided because it relies on individual cognitivism. This view of cognition is incompatible with the Hayekian view of cognition which treats rationality as an emergent phenomenon of social interaction
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Individualism, universalism and climate change Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Elodie Douarin, Tim Hinks
Is ‘individualism’ pure selfishness? The climate change literature often assumes so. However, individualism can be seen as capturing values aligned with self-determination and self-achievement but also universalism. Indeed, cultural psychology recognises individualism as reflecting both personal agency and one's embeddedness, not in narrowly defined in-groups, but in society broadly. Through this lens
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Mapping inflation to economic freedom in the post-COVID era Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-02-16 Ryan H. Murphy
The Economic Freedom of the World report measures five dimensions of economic freedom, one of them being Sound Money. Compared to where it had been in decades for most of the West, inflation skyrocketed in 2021. Yet the indicator which measures inflation in the most recent year barely budged due to how it is specified and parameterized. This paper explores potential improvements on the methodology
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Yoram Barzel: commemorating the life of an institutional economist Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Douglas W. Allen
Yoram Barzel was a Chicago trained price theorist who became a foundational contributor to the literature on property rights and transaction costs. In this commemoration I outline the academic path he took, but then concentrate on the set of transformative ideas he had that led to ‘the theory of economic property rights’. It was Yoram's belief that such a theory is the ground floor for the study of
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Legitimacy of government and governance Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Imran Arif, Nabamita Dutta
This paper highlights scholarly neglect of political legitimacy, the idea of a state's use of power in ways acceptable to its citizens. We argue that political legitimacy affects a state's ability to formulate and implement its policies, thus affecting governance. Our paper provides the first empirical evidence of the positive relationship between political legitimacy and governance. We combine novel
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A needs theory of governance: taking transaction cost theory back to humanistic economics and self-actualisation Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-01-26 Silvia Sacchetti, Ermanno Tortia
In this paper we seek to integrate human needs and self-actualisation into the design of organisational governance. We problematise the assumptions that guide established justifications for governance, thus providing an opportunity for this type of theoretical approach. Drawing on Maslow's human psychology, we consider the potentially regressive features of the prescriptions of transaction cost theory
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The institutional environment and gig platform transaction cost solutions Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Svetlana Golovanova, Eduardo Pontual Ribeiro, Evgeny Styrin, Ivan Makarov
A growing number of labour market participants transact through gig platforms. This choice should reflect a reduction in transaction costs for platform users, compared to costs they meet when using alternative modes of governance. We exploit a unique cross-platform, cross-country data set of gig platform users to test the impact of the institutional environment in one of its dimensions – the strictness
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Ancestral institutions and the salience of African ethnicity: Theory and Evidence Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-01-15 Abreham Adera
This paper advances a pre-colonial institutional thesis to explain the variation in the salience of ethnicity in African societies. It posits that pre-colonial political centralization facilitated the accumulation of economic and institutional advantages, positioning descendants of centralized ethnic groups to benefit from these advantages within postcolonial states. Social identity choices are rational;
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The relationship between institutional quality, trust and private savings Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-01-08 François Facchini, Sophie Massin, Kevin Brookes
This paper draws on macroeconomics, the economics of institutions and the economics of trust to explain private savings at the national level for 33 OECD (mostly European) countries from 2002 to 2012. More specifically, it raises two questions: (i) is it the quality of institutions or trust in institutions that drives private savings? (ii) if trust matters, what is the appropriate institutional level
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Determinants of social norms II – religion and family as mediators Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2024-01-08 Stefan Voigt
It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behaviour and impact economic development. This insight leads to the question: How do social norms evolve? In a companion paper (Voigt (2023). Journal of Institutional Economics, 20), I survey studies showing that geographical conditions can have direct and long-lasting effects on social norms. This paper goes one step further: It surveys studies
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Do human capital and institutional quality contribute to Brazil's long term real convergence/divergence process? A Markov regime-switching autoregressive approach Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-12-19 Natalia Izelli Doré, Aurora A. C. Teixeira
This paper assesses Brazil's real convergence (1822–2019) through unit root tests and Markov Regime-Switching (MS) models in three different scenarios: towards (i) other six Latin American countries (LA6); (ii) Portugal; and (iii) the technological frontier country, the US. The extended unit root test results favour Brazil's very long-run real convergence towards LA6 and Portugal, but not the US. The
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Remittance dependence, support for taxation and quality of public services in Africa Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-12-15 Maty Konte, Gideon Ndubuisi
We explore the heterogeneous effect of migrant remittances on citizens' support for taxation using a sample comprising 45,000 individuals from the Afrobarometer survey round 7 [2016–2018] across 34 African countries. To correct for unobserved heterogeneity, we endogenously identify latent classes/subtypes of individuals that share similar patterns on how their support for taxation is affected by their
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Location choice and Indian outward foreign direct investment: institutional thresholds and differentiating between institutional quality and institutional distance Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Rishika Nayyar, John M. Luiz
Institutions matter as regards foreign location investment decisions, but how they matter and in what ways, is still unsettled. We differentiate between absolute and relative institutional effects on both location choice and on the size of the FDI and do so by examining India's outward FDI flows between 2008 and 2020. We find that absolute and relative institutional measures have different effects
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Determinants of social norms I – the role of geography Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-12-07 Stefan Voigt
It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behaviour 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. It turns out that many social norms are either directly or indirectly determined by geography broadly conceived and can, hence, be considered
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Global economic freedom during the second year of the pandemic Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Vincent J. Miozzi, Benjamin Powell
This note updates a measure of lockdown regulatory freedom for 2021 and then uses it to adjust countries' 2021 economic freedom scores to account for pandemic regulations that impact economic freedom but otherwise would go unmeasured. We directly follow Miozzi and Powell's (2023a, Journal of Institutional Economics19(2), 229–250) methods to measure lockdown regulations and adjust 2020 economic freedom
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Shocking resilience? Effects of extreme events on constitutional compliance Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Abishek Choutagunta, Jerg Gutmann, Stefan Voigt
It is often argued that governments take advantage of extreme events to expand their power to the detriment of the political opposition and citizens at large. Violations of constitutional constraints are a clear indication of such opportunistic behaviour. We study whether natural disasters, conflicts and other extreme events systematically diminish governments' compliance with constitutional constraints
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Elinor Ostrom on choice, collective action and rationality: a Senian analysis Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Paul Lewis, Matias Petersen
This paper explores Elinor Ostrom's account of practical reason through the conceptual lens provided by a typology of dimensions of rational conduct advanced by Amartya Sen. On Sen's view, self-interested behaviour has three independent, and separable, features: self-centred welfare, self-welfare goal and self-goal choice. We suggest that Ostrom is committed to a version of rational choice theory that
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Shock me like a Hurricane: how Hurricane Katrina changed Louisiana's formal and informal institutions Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Veeshan Rayamajhee, Raymond J. March, Corbin C. T. Clark
Institutions matter for postdisaster recovery. Conversely, natural disasters can also alter a society's institutions. Using the synthetic control method, this study examines the effects that Hurricane Katrina (2005) had on the formal and informal institutions in Louisiana. As measures of formal institutions, we employ two economic freedom scores corresponding to government employment (GE) (as a share
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Institutions and industry-level employment creation: an empirical analysis of the US metro-level data Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Imran Arif
A growing strand of literature relates pro-market institutions to business and overall employment creation. However, the effects of pro-market institutions on industry-specific employment creation still need to be better understood. Employment creation in some industries may be more sensitive to pro-market institutions. Moreover, if these industries employ a large proportion of the population, the
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The limits of generality for constitutional design Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Andrew T. Young
James Buchanan was a fervent advocate of a non-discriminatory politics. However, he translated his views on constitutional political economy into (de jure) constitutional design in an insufficiently thoughtful way. Simply writing non-discriminatory politics into a Constitution is unlikely to have the desired effect. All Constitutional language is open to interpretation and political entrepreneurs will
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Repugnance and institutions: an introductory essay Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Marie Daou, Alain Marciano
This symposium is based on a workshop organized (online) on 24–25 February 2021 and sponsored by World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR). In this introduction, we stress the institutional dimension of repugnance, and show how it is dealt with in the papers gathered in the symposium. Kimberly Krawiec analyses repugnance in connection with externalities, and shows that contrary
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Repugnance, externalities and subjectivism: a comment on Krawiec Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-07-20 Marie Daou, Alain Marciano
In her ‘Markets, repugnance, and externalities’ (2022), Kimberly Krawiec notes that the so-called corruption theorists fail to provide evidence that the adoption of repugnant behaviours or commodification destroy social values. She adds that, the values repugnant behaviours are supposed to destroy may even be reinforced after a market has been created. The explanation she explores is that the creation
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Choice of slavery institutions in Ancient Greece: Athenian chattels and Spartan helots Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 George Tridimas
The ancient Greek city-states were slave societies, but the institutions of slavery differed across them. The slaves of democratic Athens were foreigners bought as chattels labouring in agriculture, craftsmanship, banking, mining, and domestic services and were often given some limited freedoms and extra pay. On the contrary, the helots, the slaves of oligarchic Sparta, were indigenous of the lands
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Corporate hierarchies and workplace voice Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Filippo Belloc, Gabriel Burdin, Fabio Landini
We investigate whether workplace voice through institutionalized forms of employee representation (ER) affects the design of firm hierarchies. We look at the role of ER within a knowledge-based view of hierarchies, where the firm's choice of hierarchical layers depends on the trade-off between communication and knowledge acquisition costs. Using a sample of more than 20,000 private-sector firms in
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Divergence before the division: the colonial origins of separate development paths in Korea Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-30 Martin Andersson, Montserrat López Jerez, Luka Miladinovic
This study revisits the question of what impact Japanese colonialism had on the long-term economic development of North and South Korea. Factor endowments, economic activity and economic performance are compared between the regions that later became parts of North and South Korea, respectively. The study finds that important elements of the economic history of the peninsula have not been sufficiently
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Exchanges with and without the sword: slavery, politics-as-exchange and freedom in James M. Buchanan's institutional economics Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-29 John Meadowcroft
James M. Buchanan's politics-as-exchange retrospectively conceptualized formal institutions emerging from bilateral agreements to establish reciprocal rights and prospectively guided constitutional entrepreneurs to broker Pareto-superior reforms that had unanimous consent. Buchanan believed this conceptualization of politics-as-exchange was necessitated by his ontological–methodological individualism
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Constraints on the executive and tax revenues in the long run Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Antonio Savoia, Kunal Sen, Abrams M. E. Tagem
We argue that tax revenues and political institutions placing constraints on the executive power may reinforce each other over time and so co-evolve in the long run. This may also bring a shift in the composition of revenues, from taxes levied on a narrow base to broadly levied taxes. To test these hypotheses, we use historical cross-country data covering 31 countries for 1800–2012 and panel time series
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Institutions and tax capacity in sub-Saharan Africa Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Abrams Mbu Enow Tagem, Oliver Morrissey
This paper contributes to research on the institutional determinants of tax capacity using annual data from 39 sub-Saharan African countries from 1985 to 2018 to construct a measure of tax capacity for each country based on the trend component of the ratio of actual to potential tax revenue. Potential revenue is estimated by a parsimonious tax performance specification, including only variables found
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Pre-colonial centralization and tax compliance norms in contemporary Uganda Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Merima Ali, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad
The paper examines the legacy of pre-colonial centralization on tax compliance norms of citizens in contemporary Uganda. Using a regression discontinuity analysis on neighboring ethnic homelands with different levels of pre-colonial centralization, we find that pre-colonial centralization is correlated with stronger norm for tax compliance. The result is explained by the legacy of location-specific
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No taxation without informational foundation: on the role of legibility in tax state development Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Matthias vom Hau, José Alejandro Peres-Cajías, Hillel David Soifer
This article combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity. We show that information capacity contributes to the development of fiscal capacity. When states have accurate information about their subject populations, territories, and economies, they are more effective
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No taxation without state-assigned property rights: formalization of individual property rights on land and taxation in sub-Saharan Africa Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-14 Marina Nistotskaya, Michelle D'Arcy
The arguments that property rights and taxation positively affect development are well established in separate literatures, but the link between property rights and taxation is under-studied. To address this gap, we theorize, in the fiscal contract tradition, that property rights assigned and upheld by the state, as opposed to other political authorities, increase individual assent to taxation. We
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Political regimes and firms' decisions to pay bribes: theory and evidence from firm-level surveys Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Shuichiro Nishioka, Sumi Sharma, Tuan Viet Le
This paper makes the most of the observed actions of bribe takers and givers from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and studies how a taker's action influences a giver's decision to pay bribes. To motivate our empirical study, we consider Kaufmann and Wei's (1999) Stackelberg game between a tax authority and a firm that undergoes tax inspection. The model predicts that, when the authority can use its
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Introduction to the symposium on the shadow economy, tax behaviour, and institutions Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Catalina Granda, Christoph Kogler
This JOIE symposium features some of the most influential papers presented in the seventh version of the conference on The shadow economy, tax behaviour, and institutions. Accordingly, it brings together contributions from several disciplines and schools of thought in the social sciences and the humanities exploring such issues as the role of formal and informal institutions in understanding the shadow
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Economic analyses of repugnant market transactions: a modest typology Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Péter Cserne
Economic accounts of repugnance concern two broad questions: the rationalisation of sentiments of repugnance (do emotional and visceral reactions of repugnance track valid reasons for not engaging in or condemning certain (trans)actions?) and institutional design (how to institute, regulate, or restrict markets in response to reasonable objections). If repugnance expresses valid practical reasons for
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Role of social aversion in the motivations for tax law compliance Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Karnit Malka Tiv
Discovering individuals' internal motivations for paying taxes is essential to a tax system since the basic assumption of any tax system is that most of the population pays their taxes voluntarily. This article examines the existence of a social aversion towards tax offenders in Israel as well as the variables that affect tax law compliance and increase tax payments. In this respect, the article presents
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To what extent do institutional arrangements shape the excludability of resource systems? Lessons from French farms Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Grâce Kassis
The question of the impact of institutional arrangements on the nature of goods is insufficiently addressed in the literature. By the nature of goods, we refer to the economic taxonomy of goods, meaning their privateness is defined according to their degrees of excludability and subtractability. This paper aims to fill this research gap by examining whether institutional arrangements developed for
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Measuring open access orders Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Ryan H. Murphy
This paper assesses how to quantitatively classify countries as conforming to the ideal of an ‘open access order’ in the spirit of Douglass North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry Weingast's Violence and Social Orders. It does so by taking the harmonic mean of already existing measures of economic freedom, liberal democracy, and state capacity. Thirty-five countries out of 161 in 2020 were assessed to
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‘It was organized from the bottom’: the response from community-based institutions during the 2014 Ebola epidemic Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Sabine Iva Franklin
What was the turning point in the world's largest and deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus disease? Public health interventions tend to focus on supply-side provision of public health goods. These goods are clinical resources such as medicine or equipment. However, no nation has enough resources to ‘treat’ its way out of a widespread epidemic. Behavioural changes, such as social distancing, are needed
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Impact of bridging social capital on the tragedy of the commons: experimental evidence Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-03-28 Karolina Safarzynska, Marta Sylwestrzak
Sharing resources between members of different tribes and collectives is common and well-documented. Surprisingly, little is known about factors that are conducive to building social relationships between groups. We design a common-pool resource experiment, where after harvesting, groups can send some of their harvest to augment the resource of the outgroup. We compare donations made by individuals
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Geographical indications as global knowledge commons: Ostrom's law on common intellectual property and collective action Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Armelle Mazé
In this article, we reconceptualize, using an extended discrete and dynamic Ostrom's classification, the specific intellectual property (IP) regimes that support geographical indications (GIs) as ‘knowledge commons’, e.g. a set of shared collective knowledge resources constituting a complex ecosystem created and shared by a group of people that has remained subject to social dilemma. Geographical names
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Legal systems and stock market efficiency: an empirical analysis of stock indices around the world Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-03-17 Natalia Diniz-Maganini, Abdul A. Rasheed, Mahmut Yaşar
We examine whether the differences in the legal origins of countries (Common Law versus Civil Law) can explain the variations in the price efficiencies of the stock markets of different countries. Based on multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis of the daily stock indices of 34 countries over 21 years, we find that the stock price indices in Common Law origin countries show greater price efficiency
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Foreigner kings as local kingmakers: how the ‘unusual’ marginalization of conservative political groups occurred in pre-Industrial Revolution Britain Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-03-09 Makio Yamada
Building on the Hodgson–Mokyr debate in this journal (Volume 18, Issue 1, 2022), this article discusses how modern economic growth occurred in pre-Industrial Revolution Britain, with a particular focus on coalition politics and the marginalization of conservative political groups – vetoers to change. Such political marginalization was unusual before the 19th century, when monarchs had substantial political
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Problematizing state capacity: the Rwandan case Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Leander Heldring, James A. Robinson
We argue that the effectiveness of Rwandan governments, both at implementing the 1994 genocide and inducing the current growth miracle, illustrates that the state has high capacity. Yet this capacity is not captured by conventional Weberian concepts, with their focus on taxation and formal bureaucracy. Rather, the capacity of Rwanda's state relies on its ability to leverage dense social networks which
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Conceptualizing the fiscal state: implications for sub-Saharan Africa Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Matilde Jeppesen, Ane Karoline Bak, Anne Mette Kjær
This paper contributes to the debate on domestic revenue mobilization and state-building in the Global South by exploring the concept of fiscal states and the common assumption that such states are present in sub-Saharan Africa. We systematically review the diverse understandings of the fiscal state across relevant literatures to revisit its conceptualization. On that basis, we define the fiscal state
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Where lies the bundle of sticks? A comment on Bart Wilson's ‘The Primacy of Property’ Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Walter Thurman
‘The Primacy of Property’ is a deep discussion of property as an evolved institution and should stimulate useful discussion of how property rights and transaction costs economists should ply their trade.
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Formal and informal institutions: understanding the shadow economy in transition countries Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Klarita Gërxhani, Stanisław Cichocki
This paper reviews work that tests (1) how formal and informal institutions, and especially their interaction, affect participation in the shadow economy in transition countries; and (2) how participating in these shadow economies affects individuals' well-being. The key findings are that a clash of individuals' perceptions of formal institutions with their informal institutions increases involvement
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The impact of economic institutions on government policy: does contract-intensive economy promote impartial governance? Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Demet Yalcin Mousseau
The objective of this study is to show how contract-intensive economic institutions can promote diversity and inclusion of social and political groups in economic and business opportunities provided by governments. Building on the interdisciplinary political economy and governance literatures, two types of economic institutions are identified: rent-seeking and contract-intensive. It is argued that
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Integrating the exploration-exploitation dilemma and bad institutions to the Austrian theory of destructive entrepreneurship: a new perspective Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-01-06 Thierry Aimar
Contemporary Austrian theory has expanded widely on the relationship between entrepreneurship and the structure of production, yet it has never touched on the existence of an exploration-exploitation dilemma within organizations. The objective of the article is to show that the integration of the exploration-exploitation dilemma into the Austrian theory adds new fruitful elements to the function of
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Frontier academic research in OECD countries: the role of institutional factors Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-01-06 Thanh Le, Ngoc Vu Bich, Sau Mai
This paper examines the effect of frontier academic research on technological development and the way institutional quality influences this impact. Using a dataset that covers 18 OECD countries over the 2003–2017 period, we find that frontier academic research exerts an important influence on total factor productivity. First, frontier academic research induces technological change by directly enhancing
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Rule of law as a determinant of the export performance of Italian provinces Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2023-01-06 Dario D'Ingiullo, Claudio Di Berardino, Iacopo Odoardi, Davide Quaglione
Our article presents an empirical investigation of the relationship between the export performance of Italian provinces and the quality of their local institutions, specifically the rule of law, over the period 2004–2016. According to the results obtained by different econometric approaches (OLS, FE, SYS-GMM), in general a secure and well-defined legal framework – by reducing transaction costs and
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Managing repugnance: how core-stigma shapes firm behavior Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Erwin Dekker, Julien Gradoz
This article argues for the need for the empirical analysis of how firms manage repugnance and core-stigmatization. To develop our empirical perspective, we compare the work on repugnance with the existing empirical literature in management on core-stigma and argue that core-stigmatization results from the mobilized repugnance. The core-stigmatized firm faces higher transaction costs. We demonstrate
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Two sides of the coin: exploring the duality of corruption in Latin America Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Ella Hugo, David A. Savage, Friedrich Schneider, Benno Torgler
The ambiguous phenomenon of corruption has long been the cause of great theoretical debate in economics. By using Structural Equation Modelling, with the two types of corruption as a latent variable, this paper employs causal and indicative variables to the Latin American region to test for rent seeking and systemic corruption during 1980–2018. The findings provide evidence for two types of corruption
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Property rights aren't primary; ideas are Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-11-17 Bart J. Wilson
The current approach to the study of property cannot distinguish the causes of human action from the consequences of human action. It also cordons off morality thereby opening a hole in how property rights work. The scientific difficulty is that our analysis must constantly shift between the individual, their local community, and the larger polity in which both are embedded, in order to explain simultaneously
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Institutional resilience: how the formal legal system sustains informal cooperation Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-11-08 Clemens Buchen
This paper introduces the concept of institutional resilience based on a population game. Agents in an economy are randomly matched to play a coordination game with two strategies, cooperate and defect. A breach of contract can be adjudicated in court. Agents can update their strategy, which is modelled using the replicator dynamic. In this context, cooperation is defined as the informal institution
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Russia as a great power: from 1815 to the present day Part II Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-10-26 Michael Ellman
This article is Part II of a survey of Russia's position as one of the great powers and how it has evolved from 1815 to the present day. Part 1 ended on the eve of the Great Patriotic War (1941‒1945), and Part II begins where Part 1 left off, with some data on the Great Patriotic War and its influence on the USSR's position as a great power. It deals with post-war reconstruction and then considers
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Measuring economic freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Vincent J. Miozzi, Benjamin Powell
The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that, according to some prominent definitions, severely reduced economic freedom. However, many of these new pandemic-related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom are largely missed by the Economic Freedom of the World Report (EFW). This paper first adjusts the Our World in Data Covid-19 Stringency
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Ownership or possession? On Bart Wilson's concept of ownership Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Frank Decker
In a recent article Wilson explores the origins and explanation of ownership (property) as a custom, and argues that the custom of ownership is the primary concept and that property rights are subordinated to ownership. I argue that Wilson's subordination argument is unpersuasive; the linguistic evidence used by Wilson fits better with the concept of possession; and ownership is not a human universal
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On the primacy of economic property rights Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-10-12 Douglas W. Allen
Bart Wilson suggests that economists interested in property rights have it all backwards when they define ownership as a bundle of rights. Rather he argues that ownership comes first in the form of an abstract concept. I claim there is a small element of truth to this, but the bulk of what he argues is already understood through the concept of economic property rights. Wilson's consternation is mostly
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Fiscal capacity in non-democratic states: the origins and expansion of the income tax Journal of Institutional Economics (IF 2.029) Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Per F. Andersson
Fiscal capacity is regularly linked to warfare and democratization. However, the majority of income taxes – a cornerstone of government finance – were introduced by non-democratic states in peacetime. This paper is concerned with how autocratic politics shape the adoption and expansion of income taxes. Political institutions help overcome a commitment problem related to investments in taxation. To