The political economy of development : the role of institutions

Abstract

This article provides me with an opportunity to review the evolution of the current debate on the role of institutions in development, relying mainly on several articles that I have written1 . Latin America has played a central role in framing this debate, almost as the laboratory where the theories are tried out. This was most tangibly the case with the Chilean free market reforms of 1975, so I start there and then trace the debate’s evolution, focusing first on my own treatment of the issue in several articles. I then turn to the debate around a recent article by Ha-Joon Chang (Chang, 2011a) that I participated in.