Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- A note on the economics of institutions
- Empirical work in institutional economics: an overview
- 1 Toward an understanding of property rights
- Economic variables and the development of the law: the case of western mineral rights
- 2 Impediments to institutional change in the former Soviet system
- Why economic reforms fail in the Soviet system: a property rights–based approach
- 3 Transaction costs and economic development
- Public institutions and private transactions: a comparative analysis of the legal and regulatory environment for business transactions in Brazil and Chile
- 4 The evolution of modern institutions of growth
- Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England
- 5 Regulation in a dynamic setting
- The political economy of controls: American sugar
- 6 Price controls, property rights, and institutional change
- Roofs or stars: the stated intents and actual effects of a rents ordinance
- 7 Regulating natural resources: the evolution of perverse property rights
- Legally induced technical regress in the Washington salmon fishery
- 8 The politics of institutional change in a representative democracy
- A political theory of the origin of property rights: airport slots
- 9 The economics and politics of institutional change
- Paternalism in agricultural labor contracts in the U.S. South: implications for the growth of the welfare state
- Epilogue: economic performance through time
- Author index
- Subject index
- POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INSTITUTIONS AND DECISIONS
Epilogue: economic performance through time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- A note on the economics of institutions
- Empirical work in institutional economics: an overview
- 1 Toward an understanding of property rights
- Economic variables and the development of the law: the case of western mineral rights
- 2 Impediments to institutional change in the former Soviet system
- Why economic reforms fail in the Soviet system: a property rights–based approach
- 3 Transaction costs and economic development
- Public institutions and private transactions: a comparative analysis of the legal and regulatory environment for business transactions in Brazil and Chile
- 4 The evolution of modern institutions of growth
- Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England
- 5 Regulation in a dynamic setting
- The political economy of controls: American sugar
- 6 Price controls, property rights, and institutional change
- Roofs or stars: the stated intents and actual effects of a rents ordinance
- 7 Regulating natural resources: the evolution of perverse property rights
- Legally induced technical regress in the Washington salmon fishery
- 8 The politics of institutional change in a representative democracy
- A political theory of the origin of property rights: airport slots
- 9 The economics and politics of institutional change
- Paternalism in agricultural labor contracts in the U.S. South: implications for the growth of the welfare state
- Epilogue: economic performance through time
- Author index
- Subject index
- POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INSTITUTIONS AND DECISIONS
Summary
Economic history is about the performance of economies through time. The objective of research in the field is not only to shed new light on the economic past but also to contribute to economic theory by providing an analytical framework that will enable us to understand economic change. A theory of economic dynamics comparable in precision to general equilibrium theory would be the ideal tool of analysis. In the absence of such a theory we can describe the characteristics of past economies, examine the performance of economies at various times, and engage in comparative static analysis; but missing is an analytical understanding of the way economies evolve through time.
A theory of economic dynamics is also crucial for the field of economic development. There is no mystery why the field of development has failed to develop during the five decades since the end of the Second World War. Neoclassical theory is simply an inappropriate tool to analyze and prescribe policies that will induce development. It is concerned with the operation of markets, not with how markets develop. How can one prescribe policies when one doesn't understand how economies develop? The very methods employed by neoclassical economists have dictated the subject matter and militated against such a development. That theory, in the pristine form that gave it mathematical precision and elegance, modeled a frictionless and static world.
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- Empirical Studies in Institutional Change , pp. 342 - 356Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
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