Three Decades After James Street’s “The Institutionalist Theory of Economic Development”: What Does Institutional Approach to Economic Development Mean Today?

Abstract:

James Street’s article, “The Institutionalist Theory of Economic Development,” (1987) is a masterpiece of institutionalist research on economic development. The thirty-year anniversary of its publishing is an invitation to review what the institutional approach to economic development means today. This article, therefore, aims to present a historical survey of works published in the Journal of Economic Issues (JEI) on economic development.

Keywords::

• economic development
• James Street
• original institutional economics

JEL Classification Codes::

• B25
• B52

Notes

¹ Although Street enthusiastically elaborating on the methodological pluralism among different schools, Latin American intellectuals had little knowledge of the institutionalist agenda, as Oswaldo Sunkel (1989) admitted.

² Despite the fact that we are dealing with articles from the 1990s in our analysis, it is important to highlight that, prior to the 1990s, “environment” had been a subject of debate among institutionalists. This subject relies on Paul Dale Bush’s criticism of James Swaney’s claims that Foster’s approach to the environment was insufficient. W.D. Williams (1991) commented on the debate as he tried to accommodate the issue in his work.

³ Despite the criticism leveled at the modest degree of theoretical engagement of the institutionalist approach with sustainable development, Keong (2005) offers a case study of Malaysia.

⁴ We measured frequency based on having published more than three articles about economic development. The three-or-more-publications criterion we obtained from sampling the frequency of authorship. For instance, within the sample, 135 authors published only once, seventeen authors published twice, and six authors published three or more times. On the other hand, the expressive number of onetime authors indicates the pluralistic bias of the economic development debate in JEI.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ivan Gambus

Ivan Gambus has a Master’s degree in economic development from the Federal University of Parná (Brazil) and Felipe Almeida is a professor of economics at the same university. This research was supported by the National Council for Scientific Development (CNPq) in Brazil

Felipe Almeida

Ivan Gambus has a Master’s degree in economic development from the Federal University of Parná (Brazil) and Felipe Almeida is a professor of economics at the same university. This research was supported by the National Council for Scientific Development (CNPq) in Brazil