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Abstract:
Improving our understanding of the nature of economic change entails that we draw on the only laboratory that we have--the past. But "understanding" the past entails imposing order on the myriad facts that have survived to explain what has happened--that is theory. To begin we need to assess what we have learned from the past and then assess the usefulness of the tools at hand--i.e. the rationality assumption and growth theory we employ in economics? We will then go on to explore in subsequent sections some recent development that offer the promise of improving our understanding of the past and of where we are going.

Abstract:
In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions' emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and choose, individually and in collective settings. We then tie the processes of learning to institutional analysis, providing arguments in favor of what can be characterized as "cognitive institutionalism." Besides, we show that a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should start at the cognitive level, proceed at the institutional level, and culminate at the economic level.

Abstract:
The upper-income, advanced industrial countries of the world today all have market economies with open competition, competitive multi-party democratic political systems, and a secure government monopoly over violence. Such open access orders, however, are not the only norm and equilibrium type of society. The middle and low-income developing countries today, like all countries before about 1800, can be understood as limited access orders that maintain their equilibrium in a fundamentally different way. In limited access orders, the state does not have a secure monopoly on violence, and society organizes itself to control violence among the elite factions. A common feature of limited access orders is that political elites divide up control of the economy, each getting some share of the rents. Since outbreaks of violence reduce the rents, the elite factions have incentives to be peaceable most of the time. Adequate stability of the rents and thus of the social order requires limiting access and competition-hence a social order with a fundamentally different logic than the open access order. This paper lays out such a framework and explores some of its implications for the problems of development today.

Corporate Law, Labor Policies, Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures, E-Business, Disability

Abstract:
Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This paper develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange. Limited access orders provide order by using the political system to limit economic entry to create rents, and then using the rents to stabilize the political system and limit violence. We call this type of political economy arrangement a natural state. It appears to be the natural way that human societies are organized, even in most of the contemporary world. In contrast, a handful of developed societies have developed open access social orders. In these societies, open access and entry into economic and political organizations sustains economic and political competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than rent-creation. The key to understanding modern social development is understanding the transition from limited to open access social orders, which only a handful of countries have managed since WWII.

Abstract:
In an earlier essay (North, 1981, Ch. 3) I developed a Neo-Classical Theory of the State. This essay elaborates, extends and modifies that essay in three directions: 1. It incorporates time into the model; 2. It is explicitly concerned with the perceptions - the belief systems - that determine choices; and 3. It relates the belief systems to the external environment of the players; both the past environmental experiences that are incorporated in cultural conditioning and the present environmental experiences incorporated in local learning.

Politics, economic history, institutional change, learning

Abstract:
A theory of institutional change is essential for further progress in the social sciences in general and economics in particular. Essential because neo-classical theory (and other theories in the social scientist's toolbag) at present cannot satisfactorily account for the very diverse performance of societies and economies both at a moment of time and over time. The explanations derived from neo- classical theory are not satisfactory because, while the models may account for most of the differences in performance between economies on the basis of differential investment in education, savings rates, etc., they do not account for why economies would fail to undertake the appropriate activities if they had a high payoff. Institutions determine the payoffs. While the fundamental neo-classical assumption of scarcity and hence competition has been robust (and is basic to this analysis), the assumption of a frictionless exchange process has led economic theory astray. Institutions are the structure that humans impose on human interaction and therefore define the incentives that (together with the other constraints (budget, technology, etc.) determine the choices that individuals make that shape the performance of societies and economies over time. In the following pages, I sketch out a framework for analyzing institutions. This framework builds on the economic theory of choice subject to constraints. However it incorporates new assumptions about both the constraints that individuals face and the process by which they make choices within those constraints. Too many gaps still remain in our understanding of this new approach to call it a theory. What I do provide are a set of definitions, principles, and a structure which provide

Abstract:
In this essay I intend to assess the road we have travelled in the ten years since the first conference on Institutional Economics with the objectives of suggesting where we should go from here. The suggestions will be personal reflecting both my special interests as an economic historian and my undoubtedly subjective perceptions of the road we have travelled and of an agenda of research. The title of my essay gives away the key questions that I believe we must answer. How have economies in the past developed institutions that have provided the credible commitment that has enabled more complex contracting to be realized; and what lessons can we derive from that experience that will be of value today in the on going process of building or rebuilding economies?

Abstract:
The neo-classical approach to analyzing the performance of an economy assumes that in the face of pervasive scarcity individuals make choices reflecting a set of desires, wants or preferences. But valuable as this model has been for the development of an elegant body of theory it is a very imperfect tool for solving economic problems both at a moment of time but particularly over time. The puzzle I seek to unravel is how do humans evolve and believe in theories in the face of uncertainty.

Abstract:
In this essay I would like to apply the new institutional economics to suggest modifications of the theory we employ in economics to make that theory useful for the study of the performance of economies through time. The modifications I shall suggest are in the spirit of Joseph Schumpeter.