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We study how the quality and instability of institutions and policies affect economic growth in 35 European countries. While stability entails valuable predictability, instability can reflect reforms that offer positive long-run consequences. We construct measures of quality and instability for a panel of countries for 1984–2009. Results suggest that the quality of policy is growth-promoting. Notably, this positive effect becomes larger the more unstable policies are. The findings suggest that for European countries, the benefits of policy flexibility – due to experimentation and learning or making rent seeking more difficult – dominate the costs of reduced predictability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden's economic and political development: • How did Sweden become rich? • What explains Sweden's high level of income equality? • What were the causes of Sweden's problems from 1970 to 1995? • How is it possible that Sweden, since the crisis of the early 1990s, is growing faster than most EU countries despite its high taxes and generous welfare state? These questions are analysed using recent insights from institutional economics, as well as studies of inequality and economic growth. The main conclusion is that there is little, if any, Swedish exceptionalism: Sweden became rich because of well-functioning capitalist institutions, and inequality was low before the expansion of the welfare state. The recent favourable growth record of Sweden, including the period of financial stress (2008–10), is a likely outcome of a number of far-reaching structural reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Using the Standardized World Income Inequality Database, we examine if the KOF Index of Globalization and the Economic Freedom Index of the Fraser institute are related to within-country income inequality using panel data covering around 80 countries 1970–2005. Freedom to trade internationally is robustly related to inequality, also when adding several control variables and controlling for potential endogeneity using GMM. Social globalization and deregulation is also linked to inequality. Reforms towards economic freedom seem to increase inequality mainly in rich countries, and social globalization is more important in less developed countries. Monetary reforms, legal reforms and political globalization do not increase inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The impact of the paper “A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation” by Ernst Fehr and Klaus Schmidt (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999), has been tremendous, and the theory of inequity aversion has been widely used in varying fields of economics. Here, the merits of inequity aversion as a theory of fairness and as an explanation of human behavior are critically examined. I argue that the theory has weak points in both areas. First, it provides no deeper understanding of why and when people exhibit other-regarding preferences. Second, the outcome-based nature of the theory ignores the fundamental role of procedures, both in the theoretical literature on fairness, and in experiments regarding actual human behavior. Finally, I suggest an alternative way of understanding the puzzling behavior of humans in economic experiments, based on the potentially conflicting norms of individual property rights and social sharing. Many modern theories of fairness essentially amount to promoting an efficient mix of these two norms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]