IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jinsec/v14y2018i05p925-947_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ideas, leaders, and institutions in 19th-century Chile

Author

Listed:
  • COUYOUMDJIAN, JUAN PABLO
  • LARROULET, CRISTIÁN

Abstract

Institutions matter for economic growth. Thus, the leaders who help to develop institutions, and their ideas and beliefs, must play a central role in any narrative that seeks to explain such growth. This leads to the appearance of institutional entrepreneurs, who act in a given cultural and political environment. We focus on the problem of state building, where formal institutions designed by leaders must be consistent with a given society's existing informal institutions. We consider an analytical narrative focusing on the Chilean experience in the 19th century. This serves as an interesting quasi-natural experiment on the role of ideas, leaders, and institutions in the problem of economic growth and development.

Suggested Citation

  • Couyoumdjian, Juan Pablo & Larroulet, Cristián, 2018. "Ideas, leaders, and institutions in 19th-century Chile," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(5), pages 925-947, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:14:y:2018:i:05:p:925-947_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1744137418000024/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter J. Boettke & Christopher J. Coyne & Peter T. Leeson, 2015. "Institutional stickiness and the New Development Economics," Chapters, in: Laura E. Grube & Virgil Henry Storr (ed.), Culture and Economic Action, chapter 6, pages 123-146, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Thorsten Beck & Ross Levine, 2008. "Legal Institutions and Financial Development," Springer Books, in: Claude Ménard & Mary M. Shirley (ed.), Handbook of New Institutional Economics, chapter 11, pages 251-278, Springer.
    3. Andre Schlueter, 2014. "Institutions and Small Settler Economies," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-44567-4, October.
    4. Couyoumdjian, Juan Pablo, 2012. "Are institutional transplants viable? An examination in light of the proposals by Jeremy Bentham," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(4), pages 489-509, December.
    5. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2009. "The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1218-1244, September.
    6. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1998. "Financial Dependence and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 559-586, June.
    7. Douglass C. North, 2005. "Introduction to Understanding the Process of Economic Change," Introductory Chapters, in: Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton University Press.
    8. Alberto Bisin & Thierry Verdier, 2010. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization," Post-Print halshs-00754788, HAL.
    9. Dunning,Thad, 2012. "Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107017665, November.
    10. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano, 2015. "Culture and Institutions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(4), pages 898-944, December.
    11. North,Douglass C. & Wallis,John Joseph & Weingast,Barry R., 2013. "Violence and Social Orders," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107646995.
    12. Greif,Avner, 2006. "Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671347.
    13. Riker, William H., 1984. "The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making: The Presidency in 1787, with Comments on Determinism and Rational Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-16, March.
    14. Edward L. Glaeser & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2004. "Do Institutions Cause Growth?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 271-303, September.
    15. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    16. Dani Rodrik, 2014. "When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, Worldviews, and Policy Innovations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 189-208, Winter.
    17. Weiying Zhang, 2015. "The Power of Ideas and Leadership in China's Transition to a Liberal Society," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 35(1), pages 1-40, Winter.
    18. Guido Tabellini, 2008. "Presidential Address Institutions and Culture," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 255-294, 04-05.
    19. Lee J. Alston & Marcus André Melo & Bernardo Mueller & Carlos Pereira, 2016. "Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10745.
    20. Schneider, Mark & Teske, Paul, 1992. "Toward a Theory of the Political Entrepreneur: Evidence from Local Government," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(3), pages 737-747, September.
    21. Fogel, Robert William, 1967. "The Specification Problem in Economic History," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 283-308, September.
    22. Dunning,Thad, 2012. "Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107698000, November.
    23. Langlois, Richard N., 2016. "Institutions for getting out of the way," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 53-61, March.
    24. Joel Mokyr, 2016. "A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10835.
    25. Bernardita Escobar, 2014. "The doctrines and the making of an early patent system in the developing world: the Chilean case. 1840s-1910s," Working Papers 58, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Natkhov, T. & Polishchuk, L., 2017. "Political Economy of Institutions and Development: The Importance of Being Inclusive. Reflection on "Why Nations Fail" by D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson. Part I. Institutions and Economic Devel," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 12-38.
    2. Wu, Jiabin, 2017. "Political institutions and the evolution of character traits," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 260-276.
    3. Castellani, Marco, 2019. "Does culture matter for the economic performance of countries? An overview of the literature," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 700-717.
    4. Jamie Bologna Pavlik & Andrew T. Young, 2020. "Medieval European traditions in representation and state capacity today," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 133-186, June.
    5. Johnson, Noel D. & Koyama, Mark, 2017. "States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-20.
    6. Iyigun, Murat & Rubin, Jared & Seror, Avner, 2021. "A theory of cultural revivals," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    7. Lee J. Alston & Marcus André Melo & Bernardo Mueller & Carlos Pereira, 2016. "Why Countries Transition? The Case of Brazil, 1964–2016," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 44(2), pages 197-224, June.
    8. Johnson, Noel D. & Koyama, Mark, 2017. "Jewish communities and city growth in preindustrial Europe," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 339-354.
    9. Kovacs, Oliver, 2024. "Exaptationary Industry 4.0: Graphene as pathfinder?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    10. Lattanzio, Gabriele, 2022. "Beyond religion and culture: The economic consequences of the institutionalization of sharia law," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    11. ROUGIER Eric, 2015. ""The parts and the whole”: Unbundling and re-bundling institutional systems and their effect on economic development," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2015-12, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    12. Touré, Nouhoum, 2021. "Culture, institutions and the industrialization process," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 481-503.
    13. Chaudhary, Latika & Rubin, Jared & Iyer, Sriya & Shrivastava, Anand, 2020. "Culture and colonial legacy: Evidence from public goods games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 107-129.
    14. Jan Fałkowski & Grażyna Bukowska, 2016. "Monopolizacja władzy a wyniki gospodarcze na poziomie Polski lokalnej," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 2, pages 91-120.
    15. Carola Conces Binder, 2019. "Redistribution and the Individualism–Collectivism Dimension of Culture," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(3), pages 1175-1192, April.
    16. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, 2019. "Power, ideas and culture in the ‘longue durée’ of institutional evolution: theory and application on the revolutions of property rights in Russia," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(5), pages 1483-1506, November.
    17. Bakeev, M., 2020. "Institutional and cultural research directions in development economics: Assumptions on agent motivation as a source of disagreement," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 139-156.
    18. Peter Grajzl & Peter Murrell, 2021. "Characterizing a legal–intellectual culture: Bacon, Coke, and seventeenth-century England," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 15(1), pages 43-88, January.
    19. Iyigun, Murat & Rubin, Jared & Seror, Avner, 2018. "A Theory of Conservative Revivals," IZA Discussion Papers 11954, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2013. "How Deep Are the Roots of Economic Development?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 325-369, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:14:y:2018:i:05:p:925-947_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.