The quality of institutions is a major factor in the success or failure of nations and a fundamental source of differences in per capita income between countries. This work is devoted to the analysis of the definition of institutions and studies their impact on the economic development of developed and developing countries. The state of institutional development in Belarus for 1996-2015 is assessed, and the directions of further development of institutions based on the experience of other countries are considered.

In this paper, we study the impact of different types of crises such as sovereign and domestic defaults, banking crises, economic recessions on political turnover of the top politicians: heads of the state and central bank governors.

This study estimates the number of the working-age population, unemployed in the economy, in the Belarusian regions for 2007-2015 covered by the Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus from 2 April 2015 №3 "On the prevention of social dependency". The paper analyzes the relationship between the number of this group of population and regional economic development of Belarus. The results show that the presence of the working-age population, unemployed in the economy, is mostly an economic phenomenon related to the level of economic development of a certain region, district or city of Belarus.

Trust in the society promotes cooperative behavior outside inner circle and can be associated with socio-economic development. This paper considers the current level and dynamics of trust in Belarusian society, the interaction of trust and the quality of institutions, and the role of trust in achieving economic growth. A number of mechanisms promoting the development of trust are presented.