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Legal Institutions and Economic Development

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  • Beck, Thorsten

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Beck, Thorsten, 2010. "Legal Institutions and Economic Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 8139, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8139
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    Cited by:

    1. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    2. Daido, Kohei & Tabata, Ken, 2013. "Public infrastructure, production organization, and economic development," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 38(PB), pages 330-346.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic development; Legal institutions; Legal system indicators; Property rights;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K1 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • P14 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Property Rights

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