Two Decades of Transition and Institutional Research: A Review

Abstract

The concept of economic transition is certainly not new, although it has been a rare occurrence. When economists referred to transition, it was spoken of for the most part as a theoretical abstract, couched in the language of either evolution, reflecting shifting preferences within a society, or revolution, reflecting exogenous shocks (such as sudden technological change). This approach to economic transition seemed to comport well with economic history, in which truly large systemic transitions were rare, and, even if they caused a sea-change in the way an economy operated (such as the Industrial Revolution), their effects still managed to filter through the system slowly. This reality meant that, unless economists were looking at relationships over hundreds of years (and rarely were data that complete), it was a safe assumption in economic modeling to take the system as a given and leave technological or systemic change as exogenous (or, even better, as in growth models, as the residual that could not be explained).