Institutional flexibility and economic growth

This paper develops a formal model to investigate the relationship between institutional quality – the current set of property rights – and institutional flexibility – the ability to develop new institutions – and relate these aspects of institutional structure to dynamic economic performance. The model is used to analyze two types of institutional reform. An increase in institutional quality lowers market transaction costs, producing an immediate but short lived increase in the rate of economic growth. In contrast, an increase in institutional flexibility results in a delayed but permanent increase in economic growth. The analysis suggests that the current work on institutions places too much emphasis on property rights and too little on the determinants of institutional change.