Institutions, Technology and Prosperity

Daron Acemoglu

No 33442, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper reviews the main motivations and arguments of my work on comparative development, colonialism and institutional change, which was often carried out jointly with James Robinson and Simon Johnson. I then provide a simple framework to organize these ideas and connect them with my research on innovation and technology. The framework is centered around a utility-technology possibilities frontier, which delineates the possible distributions of resources in a society both for given technology and working via different technological choices. It highlights how various types of institutions, market structures, norms and ideologies influence moves along the frontier and shifts of the frontier, and it provides a simple formalization of the social forces that lead to institutional persistence and those that can trigger institutional change. The framework also enables us to conceptualize how, during periods of disruption, existing—and sometimes quite small—differences can have amplified effects on prosperity and institutional trajectories. In this way, it suggests some parallels between different disruptive periods, including the onset of European colonialism, the spread (or lack thereof) of industrial technologies in the 19th century, and decisions related to the use, adoption and development of AI today.

JEL-codes: N30 O33 P50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-soc and nep-tid
Note: DAE EFG POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33442.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Institutions, Technology and Prosperity (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33442

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33442
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().