What enables rapid economic progress: What are the needed institutions?

In recent years "institutions" have again become a central focus of economists and other scholars studying the processes of economic growth, and the reasons why nations have differed so greatly in their achievements on this front. However, with few exceptions the exploration of the role of institutions has not been connected with a coherent analysis of the relationships between institutions and institutional change and technological advance. This paper proposes a way of analyzing these relationships. The concept of "social technologies" which support "physical technologies" plays a key role in the analysis. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.