First, a reality check on the role of institutions in economic development -
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A Reading List –
Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang’s elegant
piece (THE REAL LESSON FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE
DEVELOPED WORLD: 'FREEDOM TO CHOOSE') should be a must read for anyone
interested in history or economic development
Chang notes –
“Contrary to what is assumed
by today's orthodoxy, most of the institutions that are regarded as
pre-requisites for economic development emerged after, and not before, a
significant degree of economic development in the now-developed countries.
… in 1913, the US
was at a level of economic development similar to that of Mexico today, but its
level of institutional sophistication was well behind that which we see in
Mexico now. Women were still formally disenfranchised and blacks and other
ethnic minorities were de facto disenfranchised in many parts of the country.
It had been just over a decade since a federal bankruptcy law was legislated
(1898) and it had been barely two decades since the country recognised
foreigners' copyrights (1891). A (highly incomplete) central banking system and
income tax had literally only just come into being (1913), and the
establishment of a meaningful competition law (the Clayton Act) had to wait
another year (1914). Also, there was no federal regulation on securities trading
or on child labour, with what little state-level legislation that existed in
these areas being of low quality and very poorly enforced.”---
A Reading List –
Paths of Institutional Development: A View from
Economic History by Karla Hoff
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/01/17547888/paths-institutional-development-view-economic-history
Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of
Development in the New World by Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Stanley L. Engerman
Why is Africa Poor? by Acemoglu and Robinson
Institutions Matter, but Not for Everything by
Jeffrey Sachs
Government, Geography, and Growth: The True Drivers of
Economic Development by Jeffrey Sachs
Which Came First–Democracy or Growth? by Rubén
Hernández-Murillo and Christopher J. Martinek
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-2008/which-came-firstdemocracy-or-growth
Institutions Matter? By Adam Przeworski
The Last Instance: Are Institutions the Primary Cause of
Economic Development? By Adam Przeworski
Geography vs. Institutions Revisisted: Were Fortunes
Reversed? By Adam Przeworski
http://politics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/2800/reversal.pdf
Evaluating Recipes for Development Success by
Avinash Dixit
Do Institutions Cause Growth? By Glaeser, Edward
L, Rafael LaPorta, Florencio López-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer. 2004.
Institutions and Economic
Development: Theory, Policy and History by Ha-Joon Chang
http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1744137410000378
Institutions versus
Policies: A Tale of Two Islands by Peter Blair Henry and Conrad Miller
Why Has the Grass
Been Greener on One Side of Hispaniola? A Comparative Growth Analysis of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti by LAURA JARAMILLO and CEMILE SANCAK