Institutions

Readings and class materials for Thursday, September 18, 2025

Readings

•  Chapter 1 in Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

•  Chapters 1, 11, and 12 in Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012).

•  Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (April 1983): 147–60, https://doi.org/10.2307/2095101.

•  Lee J. Alston, “Beyond Institutions: Beliefs and Leadership,” The Journal of Economic History 77, no. 2 (June 2017): 353–72, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050717000523.

Really good but optional

•  Chapter 2 in Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).