Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T02:06:13.839Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

How to make institutional economics better

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2011

ROBBERT MASELAND*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Abstract:

This comment criticizes Ha-Joon Chang's assessment of contemporary institutionalism, in his article entitled ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, for failing to show fundamental problems in the discourse. I argue that the current discourse's insights are structurally biased because it fails to satisfactorily address methodological problems of doing meaningful comparative research. The discourse is characterized by a limited focus on differences of degree, a neglect of interaction, and a tendency to represent societies from a partial perspective. The result is an unbalanced debate that tends towards equating developed country institutions with economic success.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acemoglu, D. (2010), ‘Institutions, Factor Prices, and Taxation: Virtues of Strong States?’, American Economic Review, 100 (2): 115119.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., and Robinson, J. (2001), ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development’, American Economic Review, 91 (5): 13691401.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., and Robinson, J. (2005), ‘Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth’, in Aghion, P. and Durlauf, S. (eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth, Amsterdam: North Holland, 385472.Google Scholar
Amsden, A. (1989), Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beugelsdijk, S. and Maseland, R. (2011), Culture in Economics: History, Methodological Reflections, and Contemporary Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chang, H. (2011), ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 7 (4): doi:10.1017/S1744137410000378.Google Scholar
Djankov, S., Glaeser, E., La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., and Shleifer, A. (2003), ‘The New Comparative Economics’, Journal of Comparative Economics, 31 (4): 595619.Google Scholar
Easterly, W. and Levine, R. (2003), ‘Tropics, Germs, and Crops: How Endowments Influence Economic Development’, Journal of Monetary Economics, 50 (1): 339.Google Scholar
Haber, S. and Menaldo, V. (2010), ‘Rainfall and Democracy’, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1667332 (accessed 26 October 2010).Google Scholar
LaPorta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., and Shleifer, A. (2008), ‘The Economic Consequences of Legal Origin’, Journal of Economic Literature, 46 (2): 285332.Google Scholar
North, D. (2005), Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rodrik, D. (2006), ‘Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion? A Review of the World Bank's Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, Journal of Economic Literature, 44 (4): 973987.Google Scholar