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Ideas or institutions? – a comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2015

GUIDO TABELLINI
GUIDO TABELLINI*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and IGIER, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
*
*Email: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it
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Abstract

Deirdre McCloskey is right, economists interested in comparative development ought to pay more attention to the history of ideas. But, which ideas? And how do they emerge? In this short paper I argue that other ideas, besides the bourgeois ethics, are at least as important. And that a new emphasis on ideas does not make institutions less important, nor does it require that we abandon the traditional method of economics.

Information

Type
Comment
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 43 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2015 

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