Institutions and prosperity A review of Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011, pp. 375 and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Profile Books, London 2012, pp. 529

This article reviews 'Pillars of Prosperity' by Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson and 'Why Nations Fail' by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Both books are focussed on the role of institutions in determining the wealth of nations and the review compares and contrasts the different approaches contained in the two texts. The review also attempts to locate the texts within the broader literature in development and political economics and to link them to other recent work in these areas