Avner Greif
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3628236 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Avner Greif |
| NOMBRES | Avner |
| APELLIDO | Greif |
| FIRMA | GREIF A |
| AFILIACIONES | Stanford University |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 927 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Endogenous Political Legitimacy
This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post-Reformation Tudor monarchs promoted Par…
Analytic Narratives
Self-Enforcing Political Systems and Economic Growth
Outside Options, Coercion, and Wages
In economies with a large informal sector firms can increase profits by reducing workers’ outside options in that informal sector. We formalise this idea in a simple model of an agricultural economy with plantation owners who lobby the government to enact coercive policies—e.g., the eviction and incarceration of squatting smallhold farmers—that reduce the value to working outside the formal sector. Using unique data for 14 British West Indies ‘su…
The clan and the corporation
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy
The Maghribi traders
Previous studies concluded that a private-order institution based on a multilateral reputation mechanism was particularly important in governing agency relations among the Maghribi traders who operated in the Muslim Mediterranean. The legal system and a bilateral reputation mechanism were particularly important among the Genoese traders. Initial cultural, social, and political factors led to this institutional distinction, while the incorporation…
Institutions
Cultural and Institutional Bifurcation
How to sustain cooperation is a key challenge for any society. Different social organizations have evolved in the course of history to cope with this challenge by relying on different combinations of external (formal and informal) enforcement institutions and intrinsic motivation. Some societies rely more on informal enforcement and moral obligations within their constituting groups. Others rely more on formal enforcement and general moral obliga…
The curious commentary on the citation practices of Avner Greif
Institutions and Economic Performance
Institutions and Economic Performance explores the question of why income per capita varies so greatly across countries. Even taking into account disparities in resources, including physical and human capital, large economic discrepancies remain across countries. Why are some societies but not others able to encourage investments in places, people, and productivity? The answer, the book argues, lies to a large extent in institutional differences …
Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth
siders the importance of the family as an institution. Little attention, however, has been given to the impact of the family structure and its dynamics on institutions. This limits our ability to understand distinct institutional developments-and hence growth-in the past and present. This paper supports this argument by highlighting the importance of the European family structure in one of the most fundamental institutional changes in history and…
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy
It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. They also fail to explain why institutions are influenced by the past, why it is that t…
History Lessons
This paper describes the premodern European institution that supported impersonal exchange, in which a merchant's decision to exchange is independent either of expectations of future exchange with the same partner or of knowledge of that partner's past conduct or the ability to report misconduct to future trading partners. Economists know surprisingly little about how institutions evolved to support impersonal exchange. The standard story asserts…
A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
This paper asks (a) why and how institutions change, (b) how an institution persists in a changing environment, and (c) how processes that it unleashes lead to its own demise. The paper shows that the game-theoretic notion of self-enforcing equilibrium and the historical institutionalist focus on process are both inadequate to answer these questions. Building on a game-theoretic foundation, but responding to the critique of it by historical insti…
The Architecture of Markets
Institutions and Impersonal Exchange
This paper utilizes historical evidence and game theory to examine institutions that fostered intercommunity impersonal exchange during the late medieval period. It presents the community responsibility system that functioned throughout Europe and supported impersonal exchange despite the lack of impartial legal enforcement provided by a third party. At its center was the use of intracommunity contract enforcement institutions to provide the enfo…
Organizing Violence
In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. At best, violence results in mere redistribution; being destructive, it more often results in a loss of social welfare. When organized, however, violence can be socially productive; it can be employed to defend property rights, thereby strengthening the incentives to engage in productive activity. To explore how violence ca…
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
The fundamental problem of exchange
For individuals to enter mutually beneficial exchange relationships they have to recognise them as such and they have to be able to commit to fulfil their contractual obligations. The ways in which a society's institutions mitigate this fundamental problem of exchange determine its efficiency and distribution. This article calls attention to the need, ability, and promise of studying the historical evolution of institutions that mitigated the fun…
Analytic Narratives Revisited
We welcome the animated debate raised by Analytic Narratives concerning social scientific methods and the scope of rational choice. Advocates of mathematical and rational models have long claimed they have much to tell us about situations where behavior can be quantified or where the situation under study recurs many times. However, it was thought impermissible for rational choice theories (and rational choice) to venture into the analysis of big…
Analytic Narratives
Analytic Narratives
Students of comparative politics have long faced a vexing dilemma: how can social scientists draw broad, applicable principles of political order from specific historical examples? In Analytic Narratives, five senior scholars offer a new and ambitious methodological response to this important question. By employing rational-choice and game theory, the authors propose a way of extracting empirically testable, general hypotheses from particular cas…
Théorie des Jeux et Analyse Historique des Institutions. Les institutions économiques du Moyen Age
Les institutions interviennent sur l'efficacité d'une économie puisqu'elles modifient la répartition des ressources et les relations d'échange que les agents ont entre eux. De ce fait, pour examiner leur nature et leurs effets, il n'est pas de meilleur moyen que de tirer parti de la diversité des environnements apparus dans l'histoire.Une première façon d'étudier les institutions hors-marché(non marketinstitutions)qui ont régi l'échange au cours …
Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement
The authors interpret historical evidence in light of a repeated-game model to conclude that merchant guilds emerged during the late medieval period to allow rulers of trade centers to commit to the security of alien merchants. The merchant guild developed the theoretically required attributes, secured merchants' property rights, and evolved in response to crises to extend the range of its effectiveness, contributing to the expansion of trade dur…
Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society
This paper integrates game-theoretical and sociological concepts to conduct a comparative historical analysis of the relations between culture and institutions. It indicates the importance of culture, and in particular cultural beliefs, in determining institutions, in institutional path dependence, and in forestalling intersociety successful adoption of institutions. Examination of institutional change in two premodern societies from the Muslim a…
Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade
This article examines the economic institution utilized during the eleventh century to facilitate complex trade characterized by asymmetric information and limited legal contract enforceability. The geniza documents are employed to present the “coalition”, an economic institution based upon a reputation mechanism utilized by Mediterranean traders to confront the organizational problem associated with the exchange relations between merchants and t…
Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement
The authors interpret historical evidence in light of a repeated-game model to conclude that merchant guilds emerged during the late medieval period to allow rulers of trade centers to commit to the security of alien merchants. The merchant guild developed the theoretically required attributes, secured merchants' property rights, and evolved in response to crises to extend the range of its effectiveness, contributing to the expansion of trade dur…
A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
This paper asks (a) why and how institutions change, (b) how an institution persists in a changing environment, and (c) how processes that it unleashes lead to its own demise. The paper shows that the game-theoretic notion of self-enforcing equilibrium and the historical institutionalist focus on process are both inadequate to answer these questions. Building on a game-theoretic foundation, but responding to the critique of it by historical insti…
Organizing Violence
In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. At best, violence results in mere redistribution; being destructive, it more often results in a loss of social welfare. When organized, however, violence can be socially productive; it can be employed to defend property rights, thereby strengthening the incentives to engage in productive activity. To explore how violence ca…
On the Political Foundations of the Late Medieval Commercial Revolution
Although the late medieval Commercial Revolution is considered to be a watershed in the economic history of Europe, the analysis of the interrelationship between political and economic systems in bringing about this period of economic growth has been neglected. This article conducts such an analysis with respect to the city of Genoa during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Viewing political institutions as self-enforcing agreements rather tha…
History Lessons
This paper describes the premodern European institution that supported impersonal exchange, in which a merchant's decision to exchange is independent either of expectations of future exchange with the same partner or of knowledge of that partner's past conduct or the ability to report misconduct to future trading partners. Economists know surprisingly little about how institutions evolved to support impersonal exchange. The standard story asserts…
Outside Options, Coercion, and Wages
In economies with a large informal sector firms can increase profits by reducing workers’ outside options in that informal sector. We formalise this idea in a simple model of an agricultural economy with plantation owners who lobby the government to enact coercive policies—e.g., the eviction and incarceration of squatting smallhold farmers—that reduce the value to working outside the formal sector. Using unique data for 14 British West Indies ‘su…
The Maghribi traders
Previous studies concluded that a private-order institution based on a multilateral reputation mechanism was particularly important in governing agency relations among the Maghribi traders who operated in the Muslim Mediterranean. The legal system and a bilateral reputation mechanism were particularly important among the Genoese traders. Initial cultural, social, and political factors led to this institutional distinction, while the incorporation…
Théorie des Jeux et Analyse Historique des Institutions. Les institutions économiques du Moyen Age
Les institutions interviennent sur l'efficacité d'une économie puisqu'elles modifient la répartition des ressources et les relations d'échange que les agents ont entre eux. De ce fait, pour examiner leur nature et leurs effets, il n'est pas de meilleur moyen que de tirer parti de la diversité des environnements apparus dans l'histoire.Une première façon d'étudier les institutions hors-marché(non marketinstitutions)qui ont régi l'échange au cours …
The Organization of Long-Distance Trade
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade
This article examines the economic institution utilized during the eleventh century to facilitate complex trade characterized by asymmetric information and limited legal contract enforceability. The geniza documents are employed to present the “coalition”, an economic institution based upon a reputation mechanism utilized by Mediterranean traders to confront the organizational problem associated with the exchange relations between merchants and t…
The Organization of Long-Distance Trade
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement
The authors interpret historical evidence in light of a repeated-game model to conclude that merchant guilds emerged during the late medieval period to allow rulers of trade centers to commit to the security of alien merchants. The merchant guild developed the theoretically required attributes, secured merchants' property rights, and evolved in response to crises to extend the range of its effectiveness, contributing to the expansion of trade dur…
Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society
This paper integrates game-theoretical and sociological concepts to conduct a comparative historical analysis of the relations between culture and institutions. It indicates the importance of culture, and in particular cultural beliefs, in determining institutions, in institutional path dependence, and in forestalling intersociety successful adoption of institutions. Examination of institutional change in two premodern societies from the Muslim a…
Europe, America, and the Wider World
On the Political Foundations of the Late Medieval Commercial Revolution
Although the late medieval Commercial Revolution is considered to be a watershed in the economic history of Europe, the analysis of the interrelationship between political and economic systems in bringing about this period of economic growth has been neglected. This article conducts such an analysis with respect to the city of Genoa during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Viewing political institutions as self-enforcing agreements rather tha…
Théorie des Jeux et Analyse Historique des Institutions. Les institutions économiques du Moyen Age
Les institutions interviennent sur l'efficacité d'une économie puisqu'elles modifient la répartition des ressources et les relations d'échange que les agents ont entre eux. De ce fait, pour examiner leur nature et leurs effets, il n'est pas de meilleur moyen que de tirer parti de la diversité des environnements apparus dans l'histoire.Une première façon d'étudier les institutions hors-marché(non marketinstitutions)qui ont régi l'échange au cours …
Analytic Narratives
Students of comparative politics have long faced a vexing dilemma: how can social scientists draw broad, applicable principles of political order from specific historical examples? In Analytic Narratives, five senior scholars offer a new and ambitious methodological response to this important question. By employing rational-choice and game theory, the authors propose a way of extracting empirically testable, general hypotheses from particular cas…
The fundamental problem of exchange
For individuals to enter mutually beneficial exchange relationships they have to recognise them as such and they have to be able to commit to fulfil their contractual obligations. The ways in which a society's institutions mitigate this fundamental problem of exchange determine its efficiency and distribution. This article calls attention to the need, ability, and promise of studying the historical evolution of institutions that mitigated the fun…
Analytic Narratives Revisited
We welcome the animated debate raised by Analytic Narratives concerning social scientific methods and the scope of rational choice. Advocates of mathematical and rational models have long claimed they have much to tell us about situations where behavior can be quantified or where the situation under study recurs many times. However, it was thought impermissible for rational choice theories (and rational choice) to venture into the analysis of big…
Analytic Narratives
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
Institutions and Impersonal Exchange
This paper utilizes historical evidence and game theory to examine institutions that fostered intercommunity impersonal exchange during the late medieval period. It presents the community responsibility system that functioned throughout Europe and supported impersonal exchange despite the lack of impartial legal enforcement provided by a third party. At its center was the use of intracommunity contract enforcement institutions to provide the enfo…
Organizing Violence
In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. At best, violence results in mere redistribution; being destructive, it more often results in a loss of social welfare. When organized, however, violence can be socially productive; it can be employed to defend property rights, thereby strengthening the incentives to engage in productive activity. To explore how violence ca…
The Architecture of Markets
A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
This paper asks (a) why and how institutions change, (b) how an institution persists in a changing environment, and (c) how processes that it unleashes lead to its own demise. The paper shows that the game-theoretic notion of self-enforcing equilibrium and the historical institutionalist focus on process are both inadequate to answer these questions. Building on a game-theoretic foundation, but responding to the critique of it by historical insti…
Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth
siders the importance of the family as an institution. Little attention, however, has been given to the impact of the family structure and its dynamics on institutions. This limits our ability to understand distinct institutional developments-and hence growth-in the past and present. This paper supports this argument by highlighting the importance of the European family structure in one of the most fundamental institutional changes in history and…
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy
It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. They also fail to explain why institutions are influenced by the past, why it is that t…
History Lessons
This paper describes the premodern European institution that supported impersonal exchange, in which a merchant's decision to exchange is independent either of expectations of future exchange with the same partner or of knowledge of that partner's past conduct or the ability to report misconduct to future trading partners. Economists know surprisingly little about how institutions evolved to support impersonal exchange. The standard story asserts…
Institutions and Economic Performance
Institutions and Economic Performance explores the question of why income per capita varies so greatly across countries. Even taking into account disparities in resources, including physical and human capital, large economic discrepancies remain across countries. Why are some societies but not others able to encourage investments in places, people, and productivity? The answer, the book argues, lies to a large extent in institutional differences …
The curious commentary on the citation practices of Avner Greif
Cultural and Institutional Bifurcation
How to sustain cooperation is a key challenge for any society. Different social organizations have evolved in the course of history to cope with this challenge by relying on different combinations of external (formal and informal) enforcement institutions and intrinsic motivation. Some societies rely more on informal enforcement and moral obligations within their constituting groups. Others rely more on formal enforcement and general moral obliga…
Institutions
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy
The Maghribi traders
Previous studies concluded that a private-order institution based on a multilateral reputation mechanism was particularly important in governing agency relations among the Maghribi traders who operated in the Muslim Mediterranean. The legal system and a bilateral reputation mechanism were particularly important among the Genoese traders. Initial cultural, social, and political factors led to this institutional distinction, while the incorporation…
Political science (25 obras) · Economics (24 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (15 obras) · Sociology (14 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Politics (10 obras) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (9 obras) · Economic Theory and Institutions (8 obras) · Political economy (8 obras)