Economía de las instituciones: de Coase y North a Williamson y Ostrom

Economics of Institutions constitutes a main field in economics of xxi Century. The New Institutional Economics propelled the «return of institutions» into the research agenda of the mainstream in economics. Ronald Coase provided the notion of transaction costs, Douglass North understood institutions as the rules of the game, Oliver Williamson conceptualized the governance of the firm and Elinor Ostrom studied the governance of the commons. The Nobel prizes awarded to Coase in 1991, North in 1993, Williamson in 2009 and Ostrom in 2009 show the advances of the modern institutional analysis. This paper implies an approach to institutions, governance and institutional change from the analyses of the main contributions of the four principal authors and the debate over the central arguments of the institutional economic literature.