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Building on from [Zhen Lin's answer to "The grammar of
~かれ~かれ"](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/4469/542),

Brief explanation of Zero-nominalisation:

> Nominalisation refers to the process of turning a word, or more generally a
> phrase, into a noun or noun phrase. For example, こと and もの are nominalisers
> for verb phrases. Zero-nominalisation is when the nominalisation happens
> without an overt word.

Previously being examined:

> 良かれ悪しかれ has a modern grammar rendition:
>

>> [a] よいにしろ悪いにしろ

>
> It is observed that the declension of the adjective is い instead of く as one
> would normally expect of い-adjectives when used with a verb.
>
> Zero-nominalisation accounts for this idiosyncratic behaviour.

**Question:**

  * Why does zero-nominalisation occur?

  * Why do the adjectives in [a] not take on the `く` declension (along with deletion of the に particle)? Would よくしろ悪くしろ still be grammatical?

  * In what other instance(s) (if any) is zero-nominalisation appropriate?
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grammar nominalization
Zero-nominalisation - Why and When?
Interesting question! The cases I can think of are ～より, ～には, ～にしても, ～にあたって

> バスで行くより、歩いて行くほうが早い It's faster to walk than to take the bus
>
> 日本に行くには、ビザが必要だ You need a visa to go to Japan
>
> 正しいにしても、やはり心配だ Even if it's true, I'm still concerned
>
> 参加するにあたって欠かせない This is necessary for participating

There are probably others.

As to why zero-nominalization occurs, I'm not sure. But it seems like it's an
old construct in Japanese, which used to be more prevalent, but now only
survives in certain combinations. So an more interesting question might be why
it started to disappear.

よくしろ would mean "do it well/do it often/make it well". よいのにしろ would mean "make
it a good one/choose a good one". I'm not sure if it's to distinguish from
these cases that zero-nominalization survived here, but it might be a theory.
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Regarding your first question, the answer is economy. In general, language
tends to omit things that are obvious, although different languages have
different restrictions regarding what you can omit. The less content a word
has, the more easily it can be omitted. Especially, nominalizers do not have
any meaning, and is easy to be omitted.

The `i` ending of i-adjectives in present Japanese is due to a morpho-
phonological process called イ音便. Classically, it used to be `ki`, which
partially shows the `ku` ending.

Since dainichi gives Japanese examples, I will give English examples:

> The poor and the rich  
>  The Japanese
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