The Guarantees of Freedom

Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes (), Cristian Pop-Eleches and Andrei Shleifer

No 1943, Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: Hayek (1960) distinguishes the institutions of English freedom, which guarantee the independence of judges from political interference in the administration of justice, from those of American freedom, which allow judges to restrain law-making powers of the sovereign through constitutional review. We create a data base of constitutional rules in 71 countries that reflect these institutions of English and American freedom, and ask whether these rules predict economic and political freedom in a cross-section of countries. We find that the English institutions of judicial independence are strong predictors of economic freedom and weaker predictors of political freedom. The American institutions of checks and balances are strong predictors of political but not of economic freedom. Judicial independence explains half of the positive effect of common law legal origin on measures of economic freedom.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2002/HIER1943.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2002/HIER1943.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2002/HIER1943.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Guarantees of Freedom (2002)
Working Paper: The Guarantees of Freedom (2002)
Working Paper: The Guarantees of Freedom (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fth:harver:1943

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().