Institutions and Society Models
It is ESOP’s ambition to understand the interaction between policies, institutions, and long term development. What set of policies and institutions may generate an egalitarian development path within a consistent arrangement?
Institutional complementarities and social spillovers are important to understand modern societies and the Nordic experience. Certain policies, institutions and behaviors fit together and strengthen each other. In the long run, the outcomes may look as if societal arrangements come in certain social and economic organization packages. What are the mechanisms behind this clustering around certain institutional equilibria? Is there a universal relationship between equality and economic performance, or do equality and prosperity go together only under some institutional arrangements?
Our findings
Selected publications
Aslaksen, Silje (2010) "Oil and Democracy – More than a Cross-Country Correlation?", Journal of Peace Research Vol. 47 No. 4, pages 421-431.
Baland, Jean-Marie, Karl Ove Moene and James A. Robinson (2010) "Governance and Development", chapter 69 in Rodrik, Dani and Mark Rosenzweig (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 5, pages 4597-4656, North Holland.
Moen, Espen and Christian Riis (2010) "Policy Reversal", American Economic Review Vol. 100 No. 3, pages 1261–1268.
Fiva, Jon and Gisle James Natvik (2009) "Do Re-Election Probabilities Influence Public Investment?", CESifo Working Paper No. 2709.
Harstad, Bård (2010) "Strategic Delegation and Voting Rules", Journal of Public Economics Vol. 94 No. 1-2, pages 102-113.
Høyland, Bjørn, Indraneel Sircar and Simon Hix (2009) "An Automated Database of the European Parliament", European Union Politics 10 (1), pages 143-153
Kundu, Tapas (2007) "Can Democracy always lead to Efficient Economic Transitions?", working paper.
Moene, Karl Ove (forthcoming) "Bargaining Societies", Nordic Journal of Political Economy.
Robinson, James A. and Ragnar Torvik (2009) "A political economy theory of the soft budget constraint", European Economics Review 53 (7), pages 786-798.
Core publications by subject
List of core publications by subject (pdf)