This paper summarizes progress made in a DfID-funded World Bank initiative to test and develop policy-relevant, politically acceptable, quantitative indicators of governance. There are two major components involved in the process of generating indicators that are practical means of reform....

Douglass North (1990) describes institutions as the rules of the game that set limits on human behavior, now a universally-accepted definition. North and others especially underline the crucial role of informal social norms. They predict that, like all rules of the game, social norms should...

This paper examines the role of long standing institutions – identified through geography, disease ecology, colonial legacy, and some direct measures of political and economic governance – on human development and its non income components across countries. The study employs a novel...

This paper examines the trajectory of economic development in Botswana between the years 1820 and 1966, when it achieved independence. First, I review the historical trends in the country’s economic and social development indicators. I then proceed to analyze what factors have encouraged or...

Recent cross-country research shows that there is a causal relationship between trade liberalization and quality of institutions. The literature on cross-country studies has been criticized because differences in legal systems and other institutions across countries are difficult to control for....

Corruption increases inequality in the society (Gupta et al, 1998) by reducing economic growth, biasing the tax system, reducing the amount and the efficiency of spending on key areas for human capital formation. Mohtadi and Roe (2002) and Mohtadi and Agarwhal (2002) argue that democracy first...

This historical episode is one of a profound transformation of this trade sector that between the end of the 17th century and the middle of the following one, namely the emergence and strengthening of the position of the British merchants in detriment to the competitive position of the merchants...

This article summarizes observations on the technological and innovation level of four Mediterranean countries (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia). Although these concepts are still controversial, we try to examine the specific issue of the governance of innovation policies. This approach is most...

This paper explains the lack of democratization in resource exporting countries using a two period resource extraction model. There are two classes of agents: elite who own capital and natural resources and citizens who own labor. The elite announce, in the rst period, their plans for resource...

This paper empirically assesses the influence of intelligence on a shadow economy, using data from 158 countries, over the period 1999-2007. The results provide strong evidence for the claim that intelligence is negatively associated with an underground economy. This paper establishes that, on...