Legal Institutions and Economic Development

Beck, Thorsten

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1669100

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Legal Institutions and Economic Development

CentER Discussion Paper Series No. 2010-94

72 Pages Posted: 1 Sep 2010

See all articles by Thorsten Beck

Thorsten Beck

City University London - The Business School; Tilburg University - European Banking Center, CentER

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: August 31, 2010

Abstract

Legal institutions are critical for the development of market-based economies. This paper defines legal institutions and discusses different indicators to measure their quality and efficiency. It surveys a large historical and empirical literature showing the importance of legal institutions in explaining cross-country variation in economic development. Finally, it presents and discusses three different views of why we can observe the large cross-country variation in legal institutions, the social conflict, the legal origin and the culture and religion hypotheses.

Keywords: Legal institutions, economic development, legal system indicators, property rights

JEL Classification: K1, K4, O16, O43, P14

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Beck, Thorsten, Legal Institutions and Economic Development (August 31, 2010). CentER Discussion Paper Series No. 2010-94, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1669100 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1669100