Abstract:
This paper suggests that attitudes towards markets can account for the stickiness of institutions of civil freedom. This proposition rests on three insights. The first is that the provision of different civil freedoms is determined by rent-seeking activities. The second is that “civil” and economic rights should be seen as elements of the same bundle of rights provided to the individual, and every right within the bundle of rights can be used to generate a certain mix of expropriable and non-expropriable benefits. This means that different rights provide incomes with different expropriable shares of income – an important feature for a rent-seeking government. The third assumption is that the attitudes towards markets are a determinant of the cost of enforcing market rules. The paper sets up a simple model that incorporates these assumptions, in order to explain why civil liberties are determined by informal institutions to a larger extent than economic freedom.
Czegledi, Pal, Why are the Institutions of Civil Liberties ‘Stickier’ than Economic Freedom? The Role of the Enforcement Cost of Market Rules (April 24, 2014).
First posted 2014-07-21 06:02:18
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