Empirical Studies in Institutional Change Book

	List of contributors
	Series editors' preface
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
	A note on the economics of institutions	6
	Empirical work in institutional economics: an overview	25
1	Toward an understanding of property rights	31
	Economic variables and the development of the law: the case of western mineral rights	34
2	Impediments to institutional change in the former Soviet system	59
	Why economic reforms fail in the Soviet system: a property rights - based approach	63
3	Transaction costs and economic development	92
	Public institutions and private transactions: a comparative analysis of the legal and regulatory environment for business transactions in Brazil and Chile	95
4	The evolution of modern institutions of growth	129
	Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England	134
5	Regulation in a dynamic setting	166
	The political economy of controls: American sugar	169
6	Price controls, property rights, and institutional change	219
	Roofs or stars: the stated intents and actual effects of a rents ordinance	224
7	Regulating natural resources: the evolution of perverse property rights	244
	Legally induced technical regress in the Washington salmon fishery	247
8	The politics of institutional change in a representative democracy	280
	A political theory of the origin of property rights: airport slots	283
9	The economics and politics of institutional change	304
	Paternalism in agricultural labor contracts in the U.S. South: implications for the growth of the welfare state	307
	Epilogue: economic performance through time	342
	Author index	357
	Subject index	359