The article argues that theories of economic development are metaphors which have a strong mythical content, albeit unacknowledged by social scientists. The policies derived from such theories have two agendas: a 'positive' agenda that states which problems should be tackled and how; and a...

As a Socialist country undergoing rapid social and economic transition, China presents a revealing case study on the role of ideology in the process of institutional change. Based on Douglass North’s theory of institutional change and on David Beetham’s theory of political legitimation, this...

China’s transition to a market economy has been a process of basic institutional changes and institution building. The institutional change from a socialist labour regime (SLR) as one of the backbones upholding the traditional leninist system to a new ‘socialist’ market labour regime...

We analyze the role of debt in corporate governance with respect to a large emerging economy, India, where debt has been an important source of external finance. First, we examine the extent to which debt acts as a disciplining device in those corporations where potential for over investment is...

This article examines the political conditions shaping the creation of new institutional capabilities. It analyzes bank sector reforms in the 1990s in three leading postcommunist democracies – Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. It shows how different political approaches to economic...

In 1940 Schumpeter wrote a paper entitled: 'The Meaning of Rationality in the Social Sciences', which was intended as a contribution to one of the meetings of a seminar including Talcott Parsons, Wassily Leontief, Paul Sweezy and other Harvard scholars, that he initiated. In this paper...

We develop a typology of organizational forms found in Southeast Asia that contains four major archetypes, Colonial Business Groups, Family Business Groups, Government Linked Enterprises, and New Managers. We explain how the institutional environment prevailing at their founding profoundly...

A major feat of research and synthesis, this book presents the first comprehensive history of the Dutch economy in the nineteenth century--an important but poorly understood piece of European economic history. Based on a detailed reconstruction of extensive economic data, the authors account for...

How does growth actually trickle down to remove an individual’s poverty? Is it through increases in employment? What other avenues did the benefits of growth travel through before reaching and helping poor people in this country? How do people become poor in the first place? What pathways...

From a beginning of small isolated settlements around 1000 B.C., the city-state (polis) emerged in Greece in the course of four centuries as a political, geographical and judicial unit, with an assembly, council, magistrates and written laws. Using a rational-actor perspective, it is shown how...