Institutions and Development: Persistent Puzzles

Mary M. Shirley ()
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Mary M. Shirley: The Ronald Coase Institute

Chapter 29 in Handbook of New Institutional Economics, 2025, pp 729-756 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract How does institutional economics explain development and underdevelopment? Poverty has declined drastically over recent decades, but the proportion of the global population living in high-income countries with strong institutions (14%) has barely budged. This chapter summarizes how institutionalists address four questions: Which institutions must function effectively for countries to converge with high-income countries? What are the obstacles to developing such well-functioning institutions? How can countries improve their institutions? And can outsiders, including foreign aid agencies, help them develop? While research has made much progress in answering these questions, persistent puzzles remain.

Keywords: Institutional change; Development; Underdevelopment; Poverty reduction; Foreign aid; Path dependency; Elite dominance; Culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-50810-3_29

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-50810-3_29

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