Coevolving institutions and the paradox of informal constraints
Author(s)
Seligson, Daniel; McCants, Anne EC
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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.
Date issued
2021Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. History SectionJournal
Journal of Institutional Economics
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)