The strongest reason to suspect that legal origin would not be important is that both raditions do well on the most fundamental questions, providing for enforcement of property and contract rights and requiring compensation for certain wrongful(tortious)acts. As North(1981) notes, the creation of a system of enforceable property rights is one of the most important institutional prerequisites to economic growth. The substantive rules of common and civil law provide redress for private actors' interference in property or contracts The story might end here except that would-be appropriators of wealth can also use the machinery of government to obtain their ends. Thus Weingast(1993)poses the "central political dilemma of an economic system: a government strong enough to protect property rights is also strong enough to confiscate the wealth of its citizens. " Combined with the theory of publ choice, this insight shows that governments will often respond to the demands of rent-seekin groups by modifying property or contract rights(Olson, 1982). A growing literature seeks to identify in political and legal institutions forms of credible commitments not to modify property and contract rights and thereby to encourage investment. For example, Weingast (1993)and others identify federalism as a means of decentralizing power and raising the cost of rent-seeking Separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers is another means to the same end Persson, Roland and Tabellini(1999)model public finance outcomes under two regimes, a parliamentary regime and a presidential/congressional regime, in which the latter has a higher degree of separation of executive and legislative power. The model predicts that the latter regime ill be associated with lower taxation and less redistribution, but at the cost of under provision of public goods. The paper also provides some confirmatory empirical results. The intuition is traightforward; it is more difficult for politicians to coordinate in a system of separated powers 66 The strongest reason to suspect that legal origin would not be important is that both traditions do well on the most fundamental questions, providing for enforcement of property and contract rights and requiring compensation for certain wrongful (tortious) acts. As North (1981) notes, the creation of a system of enforceable property rights is one of the most important institutional prerequisites to economic growth. The substantive rules of common and civil law provide redress for private actors’ interference in property or contracts. The story might end here except that would-be appropriators of wealth can also use the machinery of government to obtain their ends. Thus Weingast (1993) poses the “central political dilemma of an economic system: a government strong enough to protect property rights is also strong enough to confiscate the wealth of its citizens.” Combined with the theory of public choice, this insight shows that governments will often respond to the demands of rent-seeking groups by modifying property or contract rights (Olson, 1982). A growing literature seeks to identify in political and legal institutions forms of credible commitments not to modify property and contract rights and thereby to encourage investment. For example, Weingast (1993) and others identify federalism as a means of decentralizing power and raising the cost of rent-seeking. Separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers is another means to the same end. Persson, Roland and Tabellini (1999) model public finance outcomes under two regimes, a parliamentary regime and a presidential/congressional regime, in which the latter has a higher degree of separation of executive and legislative power. The model predicts that the latter regime will be associated with lower taxation and less redistribution, but at the cost of under provision of public goods. The paper also provides some confirmatory empirical results. The intuition is straightforward; it is more difficult for politicians to coordinate in a system of separated powers