The Persistence and Change of Institutions in the Americas

Though many empirical and theoretical approaches to comparative development assume that institutions persist for long periods of time, specific institutions vary a lot over periods as long as a century. Therefore, a convincing theory of institutional persistence must explain how persistence of institutional equilibria and accompanying incentive environment is consistent with changes in specific institutions. In this paper, we propose a simple explanation of how economic institutions may persist even when political institutions change and illustrate it with the economic history of the U.S. South and some examples from Latin American history.