2007/10/18 by Sheilagh Ogilvie, SHEILAGH OGILVIE · 229 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Core (optical fiber) #Craft #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Economic efficiency #Economic history #Economic system #Economics #Geography #Guild #Historical Economic and Legal Thought #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Institutional economics #Market economy #Neoclassical economics #Political science #Serfdom
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00408.x
published in The Economic History Review 60(4), 649-684 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2007/10/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Institutions—the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions—are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This article shows that alternative explanations of institutions, particularly those incorporating distributional effects, are consistent with economic theory and supported by empirical findings. Distributional conflicts provide a better explanation than efficiency for the core economic institutions of pre‐industrial Europe: serfdom, the community, the craft guild, and the merchant guild. The article concludes by proposing four desiderata for any economic theory of institutions.