The paper explores the determinants of generalized trust across countries. The findings suggest that only few variables can be considered significant. Social polarization in the form of income inequality and ethnic diversity reduces trust, Protestantism and having a monarchy increases trust while post-communist societies are less trusting than other. The findings also provide support for the use of a standard indicator as a stable measure of generalized trust and emphasize the importance of taking endogeneity seriously. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007Trust, Inequality,

No abstract

No abstract

. We thank Stephen Lea and participants at the 30 th IAREP conference in Prague for comments on an earlier version and Gilles Winkler for excellent research assistance. AbstractThis paper explores a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 90,000 observations in 70 countries. We distinguish four groups of aggregate variables as potential determinants of satisfaction: political, economic, institutional, and human development and culture. We use ordered probit to investigate the importance of these variables on individual life satisfaction and test the robustness of our results with Extreme Bounds Analysis. The results show that only a small number of factors, such as openness, business climate, postcommunism, the number of chambers in parliament, Christian majority, and infant mortality robustly influence life satisfaction across countries while the importance of many variables suggested in the previous literature is not confirmed. This remains largely true when the analysis splits national populations according to gender, income and political orientation also. JEL Codes: I31, H10, H40

Economic freedom, Entrepreneurship, Cross-country variation, M13, O31, O50,

No abstract

The economics of growth has shown that countries grow by better allocating whatever resources are at their disposal and by introducing productivity‐enhancing innovations. Strategic entrepreneurship plays a key role in this process by searching for, combining, trying out, etc., new resource combinations in the pursuit of profits under uncertainty. Institutions that support economic freedom allow such experimentation to take place at low transaction costs, positively influencing total factor productivity. We test these ideas on a unique panel data set derived from Compendia, World Bank data, and the Fraser Institute's economic freedom data. Copyright © 2013 Strategic Management Society.

We review the literature that links institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth outcomes, focusing in particular on empirical research. Most of the literature has an economics orientation, but we also review relevant literature from other social sciences, including management research. The review helps identify a number of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical gaps, calling for further research. For example, the literature narrowly identifies entrepreneurship with start-ups and self-employment; does not theorize many potentially relevant inter-level links and mechanisms; and suffers from sample limitations, omitted variable biases, causality issues, and response heterogeneity. We argue that theories in management research, such as the resource-based view, transaction cost economics, and strategic entrepreneurship theory, can fill some of the conceptual and theoretical gaps.