TY - JOUR
T1 - Cognitive rules, institutions, and economic growth
T2 - Douglass North and beyond
AU - Greif, Avner
AU - Mokyr, Joel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2016 Millennium Economics Ltd.
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Douglass North's writing on institutional change recognized from the very start that such change depends on cognition and beliefs. Yet, although he focused on individual beliefs, we argue in this paper that such beliefs are social constructs. We suggest that institutions - rules, expectations, and norms - are based on shared cognitive rules. Cognitive rules are social constructs that convey information that distills and summarizes society's beliefs and experience. These rules have to be self-enforcing and self-confirming, but they do not have to be 'correct'. We describe the characteristics of such rules in the context of a market for ideas, and illustrate their importance in two developments central to the growth of modern economies: the rise of the modern state with its legitimacy based on consent, and the rise of modern science-based technology that was the product of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment.
AB - Douglass North's writing on institutional change recognized from the very start that such change depends on cognition and beliefs. Yet, although he focused on individual beliefs, we argue in this paper that such beliefs are social constructs. We suggest that institutions - rules, expectations, and norms - are based on shared cognitive rules. Cognitive rules are social constructs that convey information that distills and summarizes society's beliefs and experience. These rules have to be self-enforcing and self-confirming, but they do not have to be 'correct'. We describe the characteristics of such rules in the context of a market for ideas, and illustrate their importance in two developments central to the growth of modern economies: the rise of the modern state with its legitimacy based on consent, and the rise of modern science-based technology that was the product of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84996921053&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S1744137416000370
DO - 10.1017/S1744137416000370
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AN - SCOPUS:84996921053
SN - 1744-1374
VL - 13
SP - 25
EP - 52
JO - Journal of Institutional Economics
JF - Journal of Institutional Economics
IS - 1
ER -