Adaptive Efficiency During the Great Recession

Robert Fritzsch provides an institutional economic analysis of the Great Recession. The author shows that institutions matter as determinants of crisis resilience - however in a different way than predicted by the prominent theories of Olson (1982) and North, Wallis, Weingast (2009), as the crisis was most severe in developed countries with democratic political institutions, rule of law and restrained regulations. The empirical results support theoretical predictions only within the sub-group of developed countries, where rule of law and restrained regulations show a positive association with crisis resilience.