Coevolving institutions and the paradox of informal constraints
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coevolving-institutions-and-the-paradox-of-informal-constraints.pdf
Description
Published version
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488.35 KB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s) •
Seligson, Daniel
McCants, Anne EC
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Journal of Institutional Economics
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We can all agree that institutions matter, though as to which institutions matter most, and how much any of them matter, the matter is, paraphrasing Douglass North's words at the Nobel podium, unresolved after seven decades of immense effort. We suggest that the obstacle to progress is the paradigm of the New Institutional Economics itself. In this paper, we propose a new theory that is: grounded in institutions as coevolving sources of economic growth rather than as rules constraining growth; and deployed in dynamical systems theory rather than game theory. We show that with our approach some long-standing problems are resolved, in particular, the paradoxical and perplexingly pervasive influence of informal constraints on the long-run character of economies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. History Section
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137420000600