Institutional Economics of Development: Some General Reflections By

Institutional Economics is now a thriving subject in development, as it should be, since the major difference between the economics of rich and poor countries is arguably in the different institutional framework we implicitly or explicitly use in understanding or analyzing them. Other substantial differences, say in geography or culture or history also work sometimes through institutional differences. As institutional economics of development is a vast subject, in this paper I shall confine myself to a subset of institutional issues, still keeping the range rather broad, broader than most of the other chapters in this book.