Role of Institutions in Economic Growth

650 Words3 Pages
There are many studies that shows there is relationship between institutions and economic growth. In their paper Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson examined the differences in economic institutions are the fundamental cause of differences in economic development. Another study made by Edward L. Glaeser, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer, they examined wheter institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and human capital accumulation lead to institutional development. Acemoglu and Robinson first document the empirical importance of institutions by focusing on two "quasi-natural experiments" in history, the division of Korea into two parts with very different economic institutions and the colonization of much of the world by European powers starting in the fifteenth century. They then develop the basic outline of a framework for thinking about why economic institutions differ across countries. Economic institutions determine the incentives of and the constraints on economic actors, and shape economic outcomes. Such as, they are social decisions, chosen for their consequences. Because different groups and individuals typically benefit from different economic institutions, there is generally a conflict over these social choices, ultimately resolved in favor of groups with greater political power. The distribution of political power in society is in turn determined by political institutions and the distribution of resources. Political institutions allocate de jure political power, while groups with greater economic might typically possess greater de facto political power. They therefore view the appropriate theoretical framework as a dynamic one with political institutions and the distribution of resources as the state variables. These variables themselves change over time because prevailing economic institutions
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