Published on behalf of the Association for Comparative Economic StudiesThe mission of the Journal of Comparative Economics is to lead the new orientations of research in comparative economics. Before 1989, the core of comparative economics was the comparison of economic systems with in particular the economic analysis of socialism in its different forms. In the last fifteen years, the main focus of interest of comparative economists has been the transition from socialism to capitalism. In recent years, mostly as a result of the transition experience, a new orientation of comparative economics has emerged that focuses on the comparison of the economic effects of the various institutions of capitalism, be it in the legal sphere (common law versus civil law), in the political sphere (different types of democracies and electoral regimes) or in the sphere of culture, social norms, etc. This new orientation is a natural development following the very diverse experience of transitions from socialism to capitalism. The transition experience has indeed shown with a vengeance the importance of institutions in the process of economic development.Questions raised along these new orientations include: what institutions are critical (courts, credit markets, good regulations, etc) for successful growth?; how should institutions be measured (subjective surveys, particular laws on the books, etc); why are certain institutions, such as courts and regulatory culture, slow-moving while others, such as constitutions and electoral procedures, relatively fast-moving; why is there so much cross-sectional variance in the quality of institutions, and what kinds of initial conditions or historic natural experiments can be employed to estimate the causal impact of institutions on economic performance? The Journal of Comparative Economics will maintain its tradition of publishing the best papers on the Chinese economy and of being an important outlet for work on economies in Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union; the Journal of Comparative Economics aims to enlarge the interest of the journal to other emerging market economies.
