دانلود رایگان مقاله باز بودن، نهادها، و توسعه اجتماعی و اقتصادی بلند مدت

Does opening up the economy favor growth? Do political and economic institutions affect the level and growth of economic activity? Do openness and institutions act simultaneously, and are there interactions between the two or are there effects of economic activity on openness or the quality of institutions? In this special issue ten contributions re-examine these long-standing questions. Specifically, four papers deal with links between informal institutions and long-run socio-economic development. Scandinavian countries are well known for a unique combination of a generous welfare state with high average levels of income and also for the highest levels of social trust in the world. From a purely economic perspective, the Scandinavian model appears to be a puzzle because of the incentives for free riding (and cheating) that come with the implicit high levels of taxation. So it looks as if the Scandinavian model works because of the prevailing level of social trust. However, this only invites the next question: where does Scandinavia’s high level of social trust come from? Gert Tinggaard Svendsen and Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen argue that one possible historical root of social trust could be the trade practices of the Viking age. While the Vikings have often been portrayed as warriors and raiders, their role as traders – down the Atlantic coast into the Mediterranean Sea and across the Baltic Sea into the Black Sea via the rivers of Russia – has received much less attention. In the non-literate Viking society, long-distance trade between strangers required a strong informal institution of trustbased norms to deal with the risk of being cheated and the risk of being treated as a cheater. The rise of trust-based trade norms in the age of the Vikings is thus held to be one of the factors in understanding Scandinavia’s outstanding level of social trust.