This thesis is an attempt to gain a better understanding of how institutions, whether formal or informal, influence individual- and societal-level economic choices, especially in the Muslim-majority countries. It consists of six research papers that contribute to the economic analysis of institutions. The first paper, published in the Journal of World Intellectual Property in 2011, investigates the relationship between intellectual property piracy and religiosity in several Muslim-majority

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... ries. The second paper, published in Constitutional Political Economy in 2013, focuses on the future of constitutionalism in Arab Spring countries by analyzing a unique Islamic constitution from a rule of law perspective. Another paper published in a collective volume tackles the relationship between business ethics and economic systems in Muslim-majority countries. The fourth paper is a novel application of economic analysis to Islamic criminal law, as it analyzes the marginal deterrence in Islamic criminal law of theft. The fifth paper, which is currently under second round review from Journal of Economics and Statistics, empirically investigates the relationship between the religiously induced internalized values of individuals in 78 countries and their specific attitudes toward corruption using World Value Survey data. In the sixth and final paper of my dissertation, I empirically investigate the long-term relationship between the legacy of slavery and contemporary violent crime in USA. Paper 1 (with Nora El-Bialy): "Can Shari'a be a Deterrent for Intellectual Property Piracy in Islamic Countries?" examines the stance of Islamic legal traditions (Shari'a) towards intellectual property (IP) piracy. Although Muslims may differ on what Shari'a dictates, most of them view Shari'a as God's law and as a main ingredient of Islamic belief [...]