Introduction - Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson, and Douglass C. North A note on the economics of institutions - Thrainn eggertsson Empirical work in institutional economics: an overview - Lee J. Alston Toward an understanding of property rights Economic variables and the development of the law: the case of western mineral rights - Gary D. Libecap Impediments to institutional change in the former soviet system Why economic reforms fail in the soviet system: a property rights-based approach - Jan Winiecki Transaction costs and economic development Public institutions and private transactions: a comparative analysis of the legal and regulatory environment for business transactions in Brazil and Chile - Andrew Stone, Brian Levy, and Ricardo Paredes The evolution of modern institutions of growth Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England - Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast Regulation in a dynamic setting The political economy of controls: American sugar - Anne O. Krueger Price controls, property rights, and institutional change Roofs or stars: the stated intents and actual affects of a rents ordinance - Steven N. S. Cheung Regulating natural resources: the evolution of perverse property rights Legally induced technical regress in the Washington salmon fishery - Robert Higgs The politics of institutional change in a representative democracy A political theory of the origin of property rights: airport slots - William H. Riker and Itai Sened The economics and politics of institutional change Paternalism in agricultural labor contracts in the U.S. south: implications for the growth of the welfare state - Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie Epilogue: economic performance through time - Douglass C. North