Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade

ISBN-13: 9780521480444 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 526 str.

Avner Greif

Opis

It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. This book seeks to overcome these problems, which have exercised economists, sociologists, political scientists, and a host of other researchers who use the social sciences to study history, law, and business administration.

Recenzje

'Avner Greif's study is a major landmark on the road to increasing our understanding of institutions and the role that they play in economic performance.' Douglass C. North, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economics

Spis treści

Part I. Preliminaries: 1. Introduction; 2. Institutions and transactions; Part II. Institutions as Systems in Equilibria: 3. Private-order contract enforcement institutions: the Maghribi traders coalition; 4. The organizational underpinnings of credible commitment by the state: the Merchant Guild; 5. Endogenous institutions and game-theoretic analysis; Part III. Institutional Dynamics as a Historical Process: 6. A theory of endogenous institutional change; 7. Institutional trajectories: how past institutions affect current ones; 8. Building a state: Genoa's Rise and Fall; 9. Cultural beliefs and the organization of society; Part IV. The Empirical Method of Comparative and Historical Institutional Analysis: 10. The institutional foundations of impersonal exchange; 11. Interactive, context-specific analysis; Part V. Concluding Comments: 12. Institutions, history, and development.