This article concentrates on the development of institutional economic theories which have begun to study institutions and their role in the economic development and behavior since the very end of the 19th century. Institutional theories have been a critical reaction to the almost complete...

One of the main obstacles for successful economic development is the formation of institutional traps, inefficient yet stable norms of behaviour. Domination of barter exchange, arrears, corruption and black market activities are examples of institutional traps that have hampered reforms in...

Two myths have harmed many economies throughout the world. One is the theory of absolute advantage of central planning over the market mechanism, and the other is the belief that efficient markets develop spontaneously and quickly enough if appropriate economic legislation is established....

Any legislative framework is likely to generate different institutions or norms of behavior which the legislator occasionally could have never foreseen. I suggested a general pattern, on which inefficient, if stable, norms or institutions called institutional traps would form.

This essay first specifies and describes the behavioral and information cost assumptions that underlie instrumental rationality and the consequent a-institutional world of neoclassical theory and contrasts these assumptions to those that underpin a theory of institutions and transaction costs....

The theory of institutional traps, i.e. ineffective but stable institutions or behavior norms, is develope din connection with economic reforms. Mechanisms are described that cause a system to get into a trap and ways of going out of it are analyzed. Concepts of transformation costs and...

We analyze R&D collaboration networks in industries where firms are competitors in the product market. Firms' benefits from collaborations arise by sharing knowledge about a cost-reducing technology. By forming collaborations, however, firms also change their own competitive position in the...