The grand experiment that wasn't? New institutional economics and the postcommunist experience


Book chapter


Scott Gehlbach, Edmund J. Malesky
Sebastian Galiani, Itai Sened, Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2014


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APA   Click to copy
Gehlbach, S., & Malesky, E. J. (2014). The grand experiment that wasn't? New institutional economics and the postcommunist experience. In S. Galiani & I. Sened (Eds.), Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781107300361.012


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Gehlbach, Scott, and Edmund J. Malesky. “The Grand Experiment That Wasn't? New Institutional Economics and the Postcommunist Experience.” In Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North, edited by Sebastian Galiani and Itai Sened. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.


MLA   Click to copy
Gehlbach, Scott, and Edmund J. Malesky. “The Grand Experiment That Wasn't? New Institutional Economics and the Postcommunist Experience.” Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North, edited by Sebastian Galiani and Itai Sened, Cambridge University Press, 2014, doi:10.1017/cbo9781107300361.012.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@incollection{gehlbach2014a,
  title = {The grand experiment that wasn't? New institutional economics and the postcommunist experience},
  year = {2014},
  address = {New York},
  publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
  doi = {10.1017/cbo9781107300361.012},
  author = {Gehlbach, Scott and Malesky, Edmund J.},
  editor = {Galiani, Sebastian and Sened, Itai},
  booktitle = {Institutions, Property Rights and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass North}
}

Abstract

Within the academy, the collapse of communism was greeted with optimism that the "natural experiment" underway in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would put to rest long-running debates about the origins and consequences of various institutions stressed by Douglass North and other new institutionalists. With the advantage of hindsight, this optimism appears to have been somewhat misplaced. Identification of causal effects has proven difficult, and few debates have been definitively resolved. Scholars who hoped to identify the effect of constitutions have progressively pushed back the causal apparatus, such that today the emphasis is as much on the pre-communist experience as on the postcommunist transition. At the same time, the advent of new data and a change in focus to within-country institutions have begin to pay dividends for the study of another key institution: property rights at the level of the firm. We trace this evolution of the literature, showing how the study of transition has responded and contributed to our understanding of key political and economic institutions.