Institutional Change

An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.

"Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time. Institutions exist, he argues, due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their consequences for economic performance; some economies develop institutions that produce growth and development, while others develop institutions that produce stagnation. North first explores the nature of institutions and explains the role of transaction and production costs in their development. The second part of the book deals with institutional change. Institutions create the incentive structure in an economy, and organisations will be created to take advantage of the opportunities provided within a given institutional framework. North argues that the kinds of skills and knowledge fostered by the structure of an economy will shape the direction of change and gradually alter the institutional framework. He then explains how institutional development may lead to a path-dependent pattern of development. In the final part of the book, North explains the implications of this analysis for economic theory and economic history. He indicates how institutional analysis must be incorporated into neo-classical theory and explores the potential for the construction of a dynamic theory of long-term economic change"--Provided by publisher.

The essays in this book contribute to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change, providing a theoretical framework and empirical applications.

This book presents a model for examining problems of institutional change and applies it to American economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors develop their model of institutional change. They argue that if external economic factors make an increase in income possible but not attainable within the existing institutional structure, new organizations must be developed to achieve the potential in income. Their model is designed to explain the type and timing of these necessary changes in institutional organization. Individual, voluntary cooperative, and governmental arrangements are included in the discussion, although the latter differs considerably from the first two.

The changes in the US healthcare system since World War II are documented here, from new technologies, service-delivery arrangements, to financing mechanisms and underlying sets of organizing principles. The authors illustrate the work with five types of healthcare organizations.

This book is about some of the most important problems confronting social scientists who study institutions and institutional change. It is also about globalization, particularly the frequent claim that globalization is transforming national political and economic institutions as never before.

Empirical Studies in Institutional Change is a collection of nine empirical studies by fourteen scholars. Dealing with issues ranging from the evolution of secure markets in seventeenth-century England to the origins of property rights in airport slots in modern America, the contributors analyse institutions and institutional change in various parts of the world and at various periods of time. The volume is a contribution to the new economics of institutions, which emphasises the role of transaction costs and property rights in shaping incentives and results in the economic arena. To make the papers accessible to a wide audience, including students of economics and other social sciences, the editors have written an introduction to each study and added three theoretical essays to the volume, including Douglass North's Nobel Prize address, which reflect their collective views as to the present status of institutional analysis and where it is headed.

‘Institutional Change and Economic Development’ discusses not just theoretical issues but a diverse range of real-life institutions – political, bureaucratic, fiscal, financial, corporate, legal, social and industrial – in the context of dozens of countries across time and space, spanning Britain, Switzerland and the USA in the past to Botswana, Brazil, and China today.

Institutional change is a central driving force behind social changes, and thus a central topic in all major fields of social sciences. Yet, no general theory of institutional change exists. Drawing from a diverse literature, this book develops a general theory of institutional change, based on a social evolutionary synthesis of the conflict approach and the harmony approach. The book argues that because the whole process of institutional change can be understood as a process of selecting a few ideas and turning them into institutions, competition of ideas and struggle for power to make rules are often at the heart of institutional change. The general theory not only integrates more specific theories and insights on institutional change that have been scattered in different fields into a coherent general theory but also provides fundamental new insights and points to new directions for future research. This book makes a fundamental contribution to all major fields of social sciences: sociology (sociological theory), political sciences, institutional economics, and political theory. It should be of general interest to scholars and students in all major fields of social science.