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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2018

JUAN PABLO COUYOUMDJIAN  and
CRISTIÁN LARROULET
JUAN PABLO COUYOUMDJIAN*
Affiliation:
Facultad de Economía y Negocios & Facultad de Gobierno, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile
CRISTIÁN LARROULET*
Affiliation:
Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile
*
*Email: jpc@udd.cl
**Email: clarroulet@udd.cl
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 5 , October 2018 , pp. 925 - 947
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2018 

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