Institutions and Economic Growth: How Institutional Change Triggers Divergence, Convergence, and Non-Zero Sums

• Author / Creator

  Auriat, Scott

• The thesis explores the effect of institutional change on economic output. Chapters 1 and 2 are empirical and examine historical events. Chapter 1 makes the case that the Mongol Empire played a prominent role in the Industrial Revolution emerging in Western Europe. Western Europe developed democratic institutions that better supported economic growth because it was never successfully invaded by the Mongols. Chapter 2 uses the collapse of the USSR as a natural experiment and shows that the countries born from the collapse of the USSR that opted to join the European Union did better than the countries that did not. The paper makes the case that this was due to the market-focused institutions of the EU. Chapter 3 is a theoretical paper that develops a model elucidating the primary causes of the sudden jump in growth rates concurrent with the Industrial Revolution using game theory. The idea is that good institutions shift the payoffs to engaging in cooperative endeavors such as trade.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Economic Growth
  • Institutions
  • Economic History

• Graduation date

  Fall 2022

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-2xqt-0692

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.