Under the Thumb of History? Political Institutions and the Scope for Action
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Duflo_Under the.pdf
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286.45 KB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Duflo, Esther
Banerjee, Abhijit
Date Issued
March 2014
Journal
Annual Review of Economics
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Citation
Banerjee, Abhijit V., and Esther Duflo. “Under the Thumb of History? Political Institutions and the Scope for Action.” Annual Review of Economics 6, no. 1 (August 2014): 951–971.
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
This article discusses the two leading views of history and political institutions. For some scholars, institutions are mainly products of historical logic, whereas for others, accidents, leaders, and decisions have a significant impact. We argue that although there is clear evidence that history matters and has long-term effects, there are not enough data to help us distinguish between the two views. Faced with this uncertainty, what is a social scientist to do? We argue that given the possibility that policy decisions indeed make a difference, it makes sense to assume they do and to try to improve policy making.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080213-041110
